Slinging… mud

In a variant of WC Field’s advice -” If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit” – the opposition has concocted a new political strategy – if you can’t prove governmental wrongdoing, just throw enough mud at Pressie and hope that some of it sticks!! It’s a strategy demanding neither policy, imagination nor evidence – just oodles of mud from their pigsty!!
Recently, Pressie’s farm has become a recurring decimal in the opposition’s political barrage of “Things That Must SURELY Be Suspicious”!! Never mind that having farms ain’t no criminal offence. – especially when acquired out of office!! In Sanction Man’s opposition playbook, however, the mere existence of a farm is an investigative breakthrough!! If to a hammer everything’s a nail; seems to a gold smuggler everything’s a scam!!
Then there is the alleged involvement of Pressie’s brother in a GWI contract. Again, the political logic seems wonderfully economical: brother + contract + President = scandal!! Never mind that there’s no connection of either man to the contract with a Bangladeshi company!! Before long, Guyanese voters may see Sanction Man demanding investigations of Pressie’s cousins, neighbours, childhood classmates – and the snow cone seller outside Leonora Primary!! The beauty of the technique is the allegations don’t have to survive no investigations to be politically useful – they just gotta survive the morning news cycle!!
Now, of course, there’s a perfectly legitimate role for an opposition in a democracy in scrutinising government contracts; investigating conflicts of interest; exposing corruption etc!! Once the evidence warrants it!! Meaning there’s a rather important distinction between holding a government to account and conducting a permanent character-assassination campaign!!
We know Sanction Man just wanna have attention deflected from his extradition trial looming in a few weeks!! But a responsible opposition says – here’s the document; here’s the contract and critically, here’s the evidence – explain it, Budday!! And not that we heard something on the grapevine, it’s suspicious, innit?? And when challenged, produce the lame excuse – we’re only asking questions!!
It’s clear that Sanction Man gonna be spending his (short) political career asking questions which he clearly ain’t interested in hearing the answers!! But just as clearly, he doesn’t see the danger that mud is an indiscriminate weapon!! Throw enough of it around and pretty soon, voters gonna conclude that the folks throwing it are dirtier than those they’re accusing – especially when you have an outstanding OFAC extradition request!! Once he shows up on the docks in a Miami Federal Court – hard evidence rather than mud gonna be produced by federal investigators!!
Since he’ll be spending a looong time in a federal pen’s general population in, maybe he could confess the error of his mud-slinging ways to his (sister?) successor!!

…gunshots
Your Eyewitness feels there’s something disturbingly casual about the response to the latest gunfire in the vicinity of the Office of the President. According to the police, a shot was heard on Friday night, an indentation and cracks were subsequently found on a windscreen of a presidential vehicle, and a suspected 9mm projectile was recovered. Flock cameras CCTV’s being “reviewed”!!
But this ain’t just another Georgetown shooting – it happened at the doorstep of our country’s highest office!! Yet the public response seems to be – nothing to see here, the President’s safe…move along – ho hum!! This complacency surrounding an armed incident at our country’s most sensitive security location ought to concern everyone—government supporters and opponents alike!!
The military establishment has been promising us a technologically sophisticated security architecture – including thousands of flock cameras, AI-assisted threat detection and integrated command centres. But if a bullet can arrive at the presidential compound before the urgency does, perhaps the problem ain’t a shortage of technology – it’s a shortage of alarm!!
Get cracking!!

…Suriname
Suriname president has again decided to poke us in the eye –expecting us to say, “Thank you, Maam”!! Even though recent inspections show the MV Canawaima seaworthy for another three months, they arbitrarily suspended service, stranding hundreds of Guyanese!!