It wasn’t much of a surprise to your Eyewitness that the PPP’s annual pilgrimage to Babu Jaan at Port Mourant to commemorate Cheddi Jagan’s birth anniversary aroused charges of “politicking” – this being an election year and all that!! However, your Eyewitness will bet his bottom dollar – and the entire wad!! – that, come this August 6th, the PNC and the Opposition, who’re the main critics, will go into hyperdrive to commemorate Forbes Burnham’s death anniversary!!
Hey…a big part of electioneering is to get out the faithful, so anything that gets the latter’s attention is fair game for mobilisation. Some smirked that after the party parted ways with Jagan’s Marxist-Leninist ideology – by excising it from the PPP Constitution – the man’s legacy might also be downplayed. But if you think about it, that doesn’t make sense, does it??
Very few of Jagan’s supporters – read Indian-Guyanese – were followers of Marx. And, in fact, that’s one of the great paradoxes of Guyanese history: that a people who arrived as economic migrants and INDIVIDUALLY obsessively pursued economic advancement after their indentureship would support a man who didn’t believe in the individual accumulation of wealth. “Capitalists” was the epithet he used to dismiss that slant!! So, their support had to come from a different source.
Was it just because he was an Indian like them?? That’s what most persons in the opposition insist – and carry on at a rate about “apan jaat” – a Hindi expression signalling support for “your own”. The Hindi expression, of course, is meant to suggest it was an “Indian thing”. But having an affinity for “your own” is a human thing: African Guyanese gravitated towards Burnham and Coloured Guyanese towards John Carter!! But that’s not the whole story – in each case, there were specific reasons why THAT leader was favoured for the group. For instance, when Jagan entered politics, there’d already been Indian Guyanese leaders like Dr JB Singh, Jai Narine Singh and Latchmansingh, and these fellas were as capitalistic as you could get!! So how did Jagan displace them?? Right off the bat, Jagan was a man of the people; he came from a sugar plantation, and never forgot that. His home for fifty years was a simple wooden structure not much different from the one he grew up in at Plantation Port Mourant!! He was an honest man, at whom no one could point a finger about corruption or cronyism!! He was totally committed to improving the living conditions of all workers, regardless of ethnicity. And while some tried to assert otherwise, it could never stick!! There was never a hint of a scandal about his life.
And that’s why, no matter what ideology the PPP follows, praises gonna be showered on the father of the nation – Cheddi Jagan!!
…for the US
We should watch how the US lives the maxim that, in the relations between nations, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies; just permanent interests – those of your country!! With Secty of State Rubio coming in today, the US made some seemingly contradictory moves on oil and Venezuela. On one hand, they slapped a 25% tariff on any country that imports oil from Venezuela – thus wiping out whatever discount Mad Maduro had been offering to get folks to buck the US sanctions on Venezuela. Those customers gotta pay more!!
But, at the same time, the US backed off from the April 3 deadline, extending it to May 27 for US oil major Chevron to pull out from Venezuela; from where it’s been shipping 240,000 bpd of oil to the US – and fattening Mad Maduro’s coffers. What gives?? Well, it hurts China – America’s public enemy #1!! – and helps America!!
Never mind that Mad Maduro’s also helped!! Mad Maduro’s OUR enemy – not necessarily the Americans’!!
…for Buju’s philosophy??
It was just confirmed that the PNC paid for those tickets to Buju Banton’s concert in 2019 from the public coffers!! Boom bye bye/ Inna vota bwoy head/ Guyanese no vote fuh no nasty PNC
Boom bye bye
