Well, after the announcement that the Minister – in the eye of the firestorm over accusations that he’d raped and sodomised a then 15-year-old Indigenous child – resigned, your Eyewitness took a bath, but he still feels dirty. What with all the dirt coming out since the accusation was made public over social media! The Opposition have certainly been having an orgy!! We’ve all read about that Hollywood producer Epstein and his high-end ring of perverts who procured young girls for sex…but that was, erm, HOLLYWOOD, where anything and everything goes. But here in Guyana??
Now, don’t get your Eyewitness wrong…he never ever thought that our politicians were Boy Scouts or Girl Guides. Far from it. He’s been around long enough to know that, once these fellas get into office, the power doesn’t only get into their heads, but over their necks!! It’s not for nothing that it’s been said “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”!! And especially in our neck of the woods – where women were raped by those with power as a matter of course since slavery and indentureship – sex seems to be part of the spoils of victory. Didn’t we end up with a major segment of our population called “Coloured” because of such rapes??
But this accusation was different. It detailed – and God knows it was DETAILED – a pattern of events wherein the child claimed to’ve been stalked like a prey, and finally was trapped and violated in the crudest way possible. And it was this graphic account that made this case different. There’ve been other accusations of politicians having sex with children in the press. Your Eyewitness remembers one by the sister of a PNC candidate back in the 2016 LGE for a GT constituency, who claimed the latter had violated a child. Nothing came out of it, and the fella went up for election once again THIS year and was re-elected. But with no sordid details flooding the newsfeeds, it didn’t shock the sensibilities.
Anyhow, your Eyewitness asks, “What now??” With the victim asserting she doesn’t want to go forward with the prosecution, the DPP indicated there was nothing she could do about proceeding. There are some who claim that, since details of the accusation were RETRACTED by the child, the case could’ve gone forward “in the public interest”. Your Eyewitness doesn’t know about that, since, after almost a year, it doesn’t appear that there was any PHYSICAL evidence on which to proceed for the case to have any chance of succeeding – without the victim being there to be cross-examined.
There is, of course, the presumption of innocence in our legal system. And this we cannot abandon, lest the floodgates of vindictive accusations overwhelm our societal foundations.
…a big brother
We’re at a delicate juncture of history. As your Eyewitness has been saying, we’re in the midst of a new Cold War, wherein the US and Chinese adversaries are still locked tightly in economic relations that were forged by the former. As the US tries to untangle itself by seeking new sources of cheap labour to supply its goods, its only economic weapon seems to be to deny China its advanced microchips, that run everything nowadays.
The challenge for minnows like us – and with our 13 billion barrels of oil, we’re STILL minnows! – is how to engage both of them without teeing either off!! In other words, how do we dance between the raindrops!! Now, some might say if the US is still China’s BIGGEST trading partner at US$.5 TRILLION annually – how can they be annoyed with us for our comparative peanuts?? But that would be missing the point in big-power politics, wouldn’t it?
The rule is, “Do as I say, and not as I do”!!
…secure borders
At “independence”, the colonials, who arbitrarily carved up Africa, left over 100 border disputes. Yet, only 18 out of the 55 AU member states have signed the Niamey Convention, to agree on the peaceful settlement of the disputes.
