Your Eyewitness was always intrigued by the name of one of the US’s most distinguished Jurists – Justice Learned Hand. He was certainly “learned” – but how the heck did he get saddled with that name?? Turned out he was named after his maternal grandfather, Billings Learned and his dad was Samuel Hand!! Pure serendipity!! Anyhow the goodly jurist once pointed out something that’s very apropos to our dear land right now: “…A society so riven that the spirit of moderation is gone, no court can save;…a society where that spirit flourishes, no court need save…”
It surely looks like we’ve reached that point. Have you listened to the daily rantings of the PNC and AFC Opposition leadership after Prezzie announced the election date?? You’d think he announced their “Execution Date”!! But who knows more than them whether the two appointments aren’t the same for them!! Your Eyewitness knows Oppositions gotta “oppose”, but this Opposition has forgotten that’s only half of their job: they also gotta “PROPOSE” – especially now that folks gonna be going to the polls looking to vote FOR something!! That is, they’re supposed to propose policies that show how they’d develop the nation better than the PPP’s been doing. All in the hope that they’ll persuade a majority of the electorate to vote them in!! It’s that simple, stupid!!
But it looks like the PNC – actually the AFC’s become just an annoying irrelevance! – has accepted Raphael Trotman’s advice to Desmond Hoyte back in the day before he departed to become Dead Meat!! An Opposition’s goal – trumpeted Trotman – was to “oppose, expose and depose”, the PPP!! That’s right, folks – DEPOSE!! And Hoyte, of course, promptly segued into his “slow fyaah; mo’ fyaah” mode that led to four fellas breaking out of Lot 12 Camp Street to lay waste to large swathes of East Coast and sections of the Police Force.
But Trotman wasn’t seen as no “Bad Boy” – proving it ain’t how you SAY things but HOW you say it!! Norton still hasn’t mastered that Middle Class art of crinkling your eyes and smiling like you mean it while sticking the (verbal) knife in the opponent’s back!! So, in the meantime, we’re subjected to weekly truculent harangues by the Opposition Leader – which invariably come out like he’s declaring WWIII against the PPP!! And imagine the fella was attached to the Foreign Service when the PNC was in office. They never sent him to protocol training?!!
And now that the election is nigh upon us and even fellas who just dropped from trees are being promoted as more qualified to lead the Opposition, we can expect the intensity and the decibels of the harangues rising exponentially off the charts!!
Poor sod!!
… extinction
Now it’s usual in any horserace for folks to pick winners and losers – even if they don’t place bets but are looking on simply for the excitement!! You consider things like training regimen; past performance; present form; pedigree and quite importantly the calibre of the competition!! Now, when you come to think about it – horseraces ain’t that different from political races!! So how does your Eyewitness see the political sweepstakes scheduled for Sept 1, turning out??
Well, some are saying a lot can happen in three months and it’s too early to call this race. Your Eyewitness don’t think so!! Take “training regimen”: unlike the PPP, the PNC has not been campaigning day in, day out. And in politics more than anything else, practice makes perfect!! And as for past performances, the PNC only won back in 2015 because they hitched up with an AFC from a different time and a different climate.
That check’s been cashed and nothing has since been deposited!! PPP wins hands down!!
…fire
There’s some talk about the new fella from Lombard Street who threw his hat into the presidential sweepstakes. He doesn’t know what he’s getting into. He’ll learn – “Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt!”
