There used to be a very potent slogan of the United Negro College Fund: “A mind is a powerful thing to waste”. It was more significant because it referred to the millions of Blacks who were denied higher education in the beginning of the last century in the US. But here, in Guyana, there were open scholarships to Queen’s College – our top institution of secondary learning, from where one could go on to study for the professions in Britain. But it appears there are still a large number of minds that are still wasted – even though they’re thought to be “educated”!!
Take a recent interview of PNC Leader Aubrey Norton on a social media platform – Globespan – that your Eyewitness just read about. He claims he’s being castigated for dropping in at working class drinking spots at Merriman Mall, called “Bam Bam Alley”, and at Plaisance Line Top. He complained: “There are some around who always believe that I shouldn’t be on Orange Walk, Bam Bam Alley, liming; that I shouldn’t be on Plaisance Line Top, and they call out all the places that I shouldn’t be because of their perception of the place. Of course I have a different view; I believe that is where I meet the people, that is where I get information, there is where I link with the people. And so, to me, though there are elements in society who use that as a downside, I believe it has a positive element.”
Why is it that Norton has to explain mixing with ordinary folks? This is due to the miseducation that is transmitted in the education system passed on by the British. Take the question of drinking alcohol: nobody could beat the White planters and their overseers at this. They had their servants – us! – who’d be at their beck and call to serve them with swizzles or other hard liquor after work. They formed “Clubs” – in Georgetown or on the plantations – where they drank themselves senseless every night of the week!!
So, how’s that different from what Norton does? And he’s being criticised by “his own”!! But that’s the point, innit?? The critics don’t see him as “their own”: they see themselves as Black-Brown White men who condemn those who don’t slavishly imitate the Whites!! How dare he drink in the streets, and not in the clubs??
Your Eyewitness remembers middle class Granger castigating those who drink Guiness on the Plaisance Line Top. They shoulda been swirling cognac in the Georgetown Club!!
Even the newspaper report took a snarky line: “Norton gets policy ideas from ‘Bam Bam Alley” and Plaisance Line-Top”!! To them, the ordinary folks are incapable of having ideas that could improve the country!!
They are incapable of thinking!!
…for vestiges
Your Eyewitness has been pleasantly surprised to read that the entity calling itself the “WPA” announced a new executive to get ready for the 2025 elections – with a “presidential candidate” even!! He’s surprised because he knows the fellas involved know about the story of the axe that was so good they gave it a – name “Walter”. If the handle’s changed after wearing out, and then after a while the blade’s changed after THAT gets worn out, it’s still and axe, we know. But is it the SAME axe we knew as ”Walter”?? Your Eyewitness doesn’t think so.
But what the heck?? The fellas in the present incarnation are anxious to use WALTER to bring down the present PPP government – and they’re hoping that all the folks from back in the day who knew of the sharpness of Walter against the then PNC government would rally round it!!
But the question is whether the handle’s made from the same wood and the blade from the same metal, innit??
…for Mad Maduro
Mad Maduro thinks he’s clever for rigging his elections. But what does he gain by ruling over a country where another eight million citizens will be fleeing in five years??
Won’t his lies be choked in his mouth??
