…from Venezuela
To the maxim, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”, the famous American wit WC Field added tersely, “…then quit. There’s no point being a damn fool about it!” But obviously when it comes to effecting regime change in Venezuela, the present crop of American leaders don’t think that much about Fields. Starting from their first coup attempt against Chavez in 2002 they’ve stuck to their guns (pun intended!) and shown they’ll leave no stone unturned to control the largest oil reserves in the world.
Now don’t get your Eyewitness wrong. The folks in Africa say whether the elephants are making love or fighting, the grass still gets it in the end. In more ways than one. And when it comes to Venezuela and the US we are GRASS! The bottom line is, there’s absolutely nothing Guyana can do about what’s playing out on our western border. Last time we tried, Jagan was Premier, Castro was busy exporting revolution to Venezuela after the 1961 Bay of Pigs humiliation of the US, and look where it got him. Or more importantly, where it got us!
The irony is, in the last go around we became strategically more important than the speck on the globe we are, just because of our proximity to Venezuela, which was firmly in the US camp. Supplying oil and iron ore and such like. The Venezuelan government was only too willing to raise the border controversy gambit in case the British lost their nerve to finagle out Jagan electorally. The Americans always thought the British had a soft spot for Jagan.
Today, the shoe’s on the other foot. We’ve gotten strategic notice because the US’ old friends were ousted by Chavez and company and maybe, just maybe, we can be of some use in case the economic crisis and the Opposition’s capture of Parliament doesn’t result in Maduro’s fall and get them back in office. Incidentally, if the Chavistas were rigging all the elections they won before, did they rig the Opposition to win?
But while there isn’t much we can do, we ought to know what might be in store for us with regime change. First there will be some 40,000 Guyanese-Venezuelan refugees heading back to Essequibo. Secondly, the right-wingers who’ll take over will push that border controversy to the top of their agenda – to bring the disaffected Chavistas into their nationalist line.
Either way, things aren’t looking so rosy for us when we look westwards. And with the left in trouble in Brazil and the rest of South America, we might as well cozy up to the Americans.
…from confused overseas Guyanese
This Eyewitness has a soft spot for his brothers and sisters in the Diaspora. Hey… without their remittances imagine what’ll happen to us! Especially since Minister of Finance Winston Jordan warned us of the economy collapsing now that drug smugglers are on the run. We’d be reduced to eating rice flour from all the rice we can’t sell.
In fact there’s this “Overseas Guyanese” Mike (hereinafter OG Mike) who did advise us to start eating rice flour when we first lost that Venezuelan rice market. The fella’s always thinking of his homeland (he’s from Leguan, he informed us). But we’d really like him to pay closer attention to the news from back home.
In OG Mike’s latest letter to the press, he worried about pensioners because of NIS money invested in the Berbice Bridge. Blamed all the “owners” of the bridge for getting “guaranteed” returns.
He should know that NIS has “preferred shares” – that gets “dividends” BEFORE the common stock shareholders!
Who haven’t received a dime since the bridge opened!
….from solving cold case
The best news this Eyewitness has received since all the hoopla about Jubilee Independence is cracking the Babita Sarjou case. Let’s give a big shout out to that determined Mom, the social worker.
And, yes, the police!
