…and vendettas
Ahhh…how the haughty have been brought low!! When they were in Opposition, the PNC – operating under its fig leaf “APNU” – and its sidekick the AFC washed their mouths daily on the PPP and their appointees about “corruption”. Now, after four years with them in Government, it’s clear they were performing what Freud called “projection”!! This, of course, is a defence mechanism, adopted by folks who have thoughts they know are unacceptable – like ‘taking’ from the Government – but then attribute those thoughts to others!!
Simply put, all the PNC and AFC fellas and felines were thinking about was “taking’” from the treasury, but projected that onto the PPP. In Guyana, we’ve got a much more succinct expression: “taking your doo-doo and rubbing it on someone else’s bamsie!” Now this isn’t just any theory by your Eyewitness. How else can you explain the orgy of taking from the public purse – which started from the moment the PNC/AFC entered office?
The enormity of those criminal depradations is on a scale that aren’t just happenstance – or even coincidence. They came out of years of obsessing on the ways and means to get their hands on the loot. In a Freudian slip, this was revealed early on – when this paper published that the bloated Cabinet of 27 Ministers; four Vice Presidents and one Prime Minister had given themselves 50 per cent raises while dropping a 5 per cent crumb to Public Service workers and FIRING 7000 sugar workers!! Now if that ain’t highway robbery, what is? The slip was the Minister of State justifying the mega salaries by claiming it was meant to curb kleptocratic tendencies in the governmental big wigs!!
But it didn’t work, did it? Even those who some thought were above the grime became caught into what was to become a vortex of corruption. Rupert Roopnaraine, the erstwhile comrade of the inimitable Walter Rodney, was caught with his hand in the till when over $600 million couldn’t be accounted for in starting the wood ants-infested Jubilee Stadium that was being rushed for Guyana’s Golden Jubilee. The revelations made some wish the British had never departed. Ironically, Roopnaraine was recently defrocked as being British!! Say wot!!?
As the looting continued with Exxon-bonus-gate; warehouse-gate; pharma-gate; new DHB gate; more pharma-gate; house-contract-gate; advertisement-gate; GuySuCo Bond-gate; factory-scrap-iron-gate, etc, etc, the PNC/AFC went on to launch a misdirection initiative against alleged PPP’s corruption by siccing the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) – boosted by special British anti-corruption “experts” – and a newly-created State Assets Recovery Agency (SARA) on the PPP, after any number of high-priced audits were conducted.
Turns out SOCU – including the Brits – was taking as much as the PNC/AFC!!
Monkey see; monkey do!?!
…and ostentation
Your Eyewitness is reminded of Henry II’s famous ejaculation against his Chancellor Thomas Becket, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest”?? Save in this case it’s not a recalcitrant priest who won’t go, but a VICE Chancellor! If we’re to go, however, by the court this UG VC has created at what was once called “Jagan’s night school”, one might be inclined not to compare him with Henry II, but with Louis XIV’s wife Marie Antoinette!! It was her, after all, who after being told that the peasants were storming the Palace because they wanted “bread” asked without irony, “Then why don’t they eat cake?”!!
As with dear Marie, it’s clear this VC has no conception of how the staff – academic and services – have to grunge for their bread. After all, his Cabinet – yes Cabinet!! – shields him from the hoi polloi!!
On to a good thing, he has his foreign buddies lobbying for him in the press.
As if they know what it is not to have “bread”!!
…and revolution
The PNC/AFC have done their darndest to provoke a rebellion – without success. Shutting down sugar factories, strangulating businesses, giving away the store on oil, etc, etc, haven’t worked.
But the announcement that Banks Brewery has run out of beer might just do the trick!!
