…of the traditional
The philosopher Antonio Gramsci – who did try to change the world, rather than just explaining it – made an observation that’s most apropos to our present situation: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Unfortunately, the PNC government completely misapprehend what Gransci was saying, and as a result, they’re about to launch another 28 years of destruction on Guyana, especially in the economic sphere. Having been installed right after oil was struck off our shores – and the two events are definitely NOT coincidental – they salivate at the prospect of a new Guyana floating on a sea of plenty, through oil revenues.
Nothing wrong with that – although that sea of plenty would’ve been much “plentier” if Trotman hadn’t sold us down the river. What IS wrong is: the PNC seem to think they’ve got to actually KILL the old economy! Even during the 2015 elections, Granger had insisted sugar had to go…and it was only to get the AFC fly into the PNC parlour that Granger changed his “mouth”. But from what he did immediately after, he certainly hadn’t changed his mind!!
Sugar is gone because Granger knows this will also be the death knell of the PPP’s staunchest base.
What Granger and his PNC will never understand – because, like Clive Thomas, they’re all deskbound “moutars” – is Gramsci’s ‘death of the old’ isn’t meant “literally”! The old has to be TRANSMUTED into the new…and it represents continuity with change.
Of course sugar had to go!! Under the old relations of production, the workers were always oppressed by a monstrous hierarchical system. But where it had to ‘go’ was to a higher level, where those objectionable features were removed….not to throw thousands of workers into the streets!!
Sugar should’ve been diversified, and workers should’ve been facilitated by the coming oil revenues to become farmers for a world where ‘food security” is the mantra of the age. But because of the vindictiveness of a Granger, who’s vowed to fulfil the ‘legacy” of his mentor, Burnham, he’s unleashed the “morbid symptoms” of hopelessness, starvation and unemployment on seventy thousand affected persons by his sugar closures. Just because they supported the PPP.
But history has a way of unfolding where it can creep up and bite smart alecks like Granger and the PNC right on their behinds. The dust hadn’t even settled on his sugar workers’ dust-up when an innocuous butterfly released by Trump over in USA triggered a tsunami in the bauxite industry here.
And guess which party they support? Payback’s not only a bitch – it can be poetic justice!!
…in fraud
While Clive Thomas was marching under the midday sun – without the “Cork-Hat” he had at Queen’s – railing against corruption in the company of the British High Commish, right across town, the folks who were supposed to be doing the actual fighting were having their pics taken with their trainers: Security Reform Advisor to the President, Russell Combe; Irish security expert Sam Sittlington, and the UK-based facilitators Tony Crampton and Mark Dilliway.
Was it because of this top-heavy presence of foreigners that Thomas later insisted he “wants local ownership of corruption”?? Surely, he couldn’t have meant he wanted locals to be actually INVOLVED in corruption, right? He already pronounced the local PPP had CRIMINALISED the state and “SIPHONED OFF” billions and billions!! That’s LOCAL, right?
Anyhow, he’d barely finished speaking when it was announced there was a $35 million fraud at GuySuCo!! Since he was Chair of GuySuCo’s Board and had a fiduciary duty to prevent fraud, is he going to investigate himself for criminal negligence?
The job of a corruption fighter’s never done, is it??!
…the Justice System
How can Basil Williams, the (Executive’s) Minister of Legal Affairs, tell the DPP the charges brought by the PPP against Lawrence and Norton for “criminal misfeasance” should be “reviewed”??
That’s her prerogative, and his call is intimidating to the judicial branch.
