Pipe dream…

…of AFC
Initially, opium was smoked in long pipes and its aficionados would experience delicious dreams – hence the term “pipe dream”. It appears that Khemraj Ramjattan, Minister of Public Security, has taken up the vice since your Eyewitness is hard-pressed to come up with another explanation for his utterances on an internet panel-interview that featured him, Anil Nandalall and Jonas of ANUG on the state of the elections.
Asked as to how he thinks the AFC would do if they ran without hanging onto the PNC’s coattails, the fella actually insisted they’d get 12 seats, hands down!! Now we all know (and even expect) that politicians would puff up their prospects. But 12 seats?? Maybe he was smoking something even stronger than opium…crack?? Because he sure sounded cracked!!
He rationalised his prediction by pointing to the five seats they secured in 2006 and then the 7 in 2011. A trend!!! So, rather than the “dead meat” fate he’d predicted if the AFC coalesced with the PNC, he sees an exponential growth after 2015!! One wonders what that tremendous boost would be due to. Their fulfilment of all the promises they made to their supporters up to 2011? Like they’d NEVER coalesce with either the PPP or PNC?
Or they’d ensure constitutional change within 2 years to reduce the President’s powers?? Or maybe because (as he boasted) the AFC played an integral part in deciding to shut down 4 sugar estates and throw 7000 workers into the streets?? Without making any arrangements for alternate employment? Or maybe it was because they agreed with the PNC that 33 wasn’t the majority of 65 – when they’d tried an NCM against the PPP back in 2014 by claiming the reverse!!??
Or maybe it was because he (Ramjattan) insisted that HE, rather than his erstwhile buddy Nagamootoo, would be the PM sidekick of Granger in the next elections?? After all, his sterling performance in his Public Security Ministry – exemplified by his stupendous “2 am curfew” initiative to reduce crime – so impressed his boss Granger, that he immediately insisted Ramjattan rest while he (Granger) took over all security measures since then!
But seriously folks when asked about the result of the LGE last year – where the AFC DID do it alone and couldn’t even pick up a single seat on a single NDC – what’d you make of Ramjattan’s flip rejoinder that it wasn’t indicative of their support? This was more than just a pipe dream. It’s the answer of a man who has suffered the worst possible humiliation by the PNC – just to continue feasting at the trough of the Consolidated Funds at the expense of the people.

…on elections?
Your Eyewitness wasn’t too excited about ending the impasse to select the new GECOM Chair. That’s just an incidental bother – it’s the casus belli, not the causa belli (the occasion for the war, not the cause of the war). And we ARE in the midst of a war…let there be no doubt of that!! It’s a war of attrition by the PNC to game the elections. We mightn’t know HOW, but we know WHAT and are waiting for the WHEN!
But ultimately, this is a political problem – not a bureaucratic one about the efficiency of the means of preparing the voters’ list. And if it’s a POLITICAL problem, it means it can only have a POLITICAL solution. Meaning that everyone and their uncle – including Granger – knows that NCM’s are an integral part of modern parliamentary governance and there should’ve been elections since March 21.
Even when GECOM finally says when they can be ready; it’s Granger who has to set the date!!

…on better medical care
Once the decision makers on medical matters in this country can jet out to the 1st world for medical care, there will be no improvement here.
Imagine CT scanners were donated to NA and Bartica Hospitals since 2016 and still can’t be used!!