…with envy and bile
With much truth, it’s been said, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. And when it comes to rigging elections for the PNC to hold onto power, that’s a trick Hamilton Green’s been practising since the 1960s!! The fella – along with David Granger, another of Burnham’s protégés – has never been able to get over Desmond Hoyte going along with “free and fair” elections in 1992 under the watchful eyes of Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center. How dare he “allow” the PNC to lose power!! Green never forgave Carter for his role – especially when the latter stood down his thugs when they stormed the Elections HQ with Carter in it, in 1992. Carter then called the US President, and as they say, the rest was history!!
Never mind that Hoyte had understood the Geist of the times were a’changin’ with the fall of the evil Soviet Empire. The US didn’t have any strategic reason to support a regime built on fraud and force. And let’s not even mention the PNC plunging the Guyanese economy down a black hole where it almost bumped into Haiti at the bottom of the barrel! Not so incidentally, they sent half the Guyanese population down the “backtrack” into NY! Green was and remains a political Neanderthal – brute force and ignorance are his forte!!
Hoyte, of course, had slapped him down – like he did all the Burnhamites, including Granger, after he took over in 1985 – and eventually expelled him and his thug faction from the PNC. Granger, not surprisingly, attempted to rehabilitate him as soon as he took office by bestowing an Order of Roraima on him and awarding him a pension where he could live like a king – or Moses Nagamootoo, which is the same thing, no?
Now, seeing power slipping inexorably out of the PNC’s grip, he’s once again gone after the Carter Center the moment it was announced they’ve been invited back – as they were for every election since 1992! Green, of course, never objected before!! Rather nastily, Green has painted Carter and his centre as card-carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan – forgetting that the man has been castigated in the US as the consummate bleeding-heart liberal.
And as for race relations and the third world, Green elides that Carter appointed MLK-associate, civil rights activist Andrew Young to the UN and they turned a blind eye to Burnham’s communist flirtations! Who does Green think he’s fooling when he says takes the “patriotism” scoundrel’s refuge to insist we don’t need “outsiders” to check our electoral process. Yeah—sure, after Granger shenanigans following the NCM!!
Gwan da side, Green!!
…with oily matters
If oil floats on water, imagine what it does on conflict!! If you, Dear Reader, thought that the coming of oil meant our troubles are over…think again. They’ve just been given a new, more powerful start!! Expect every day something or the other related to oil will become a sore point that will tear us apart. It didn’t have to be that way…but with that ridiculous contract that Trotman signed, “boat gone a watah, on that one”!!
So what’s the oleaginous combustible news today?? Guyanese won’t see first oil for another couple months – since the IOCs took first dibs on the first 3 million barrels – but we were invited to some fireworks at the bandstand last evening, sponsored by the GDF and the IOCs!! What’s to celebrate for Guyanese?? Then the IOCs have flared more than 1.2 cubic feet of gas since it started to lift oil. And we still can’t decide on a gas-fired power plant!!
Finally, we’re faced with that existential question as a new “oil-producing country”:
To OPEC or not to OPEC!!
…with anger
At the GDF conference, Ramjattan sat with interlocked fingers while every other person kept their hands on their knees. We’re informed that “this gesture reveals frustration, hostility and that the person is harbouring negative thoughts”.
Poor fella’s still not sure he’ll be PM!!
