…in politics
There’s a whole heap of adynatons (saying something that’s never gonna happen) on the futility of spinning cobwebs: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”! Or the more derisive rejoinder to such statements, “Sure, when pigs fly!!” And this is for good reason that a lot of well-meaning persons have their heads in the clouds and are given to day dreaming.
Your Eyewitness saw one such effort yesterday in the burgeoning field of “solving Guyana’s problems by creating all sorts of elaborate changes in the constitution, form of government, electoral systems, etc”. This was by the indefatigable Henry Jeffrey, once PNC, then PPP, and now ANUG – but from the sidelines, thank you. The latter decision to not engage on the hustings during the last elections, of course, didn’t lend much confidence to the fella’s elaborate proposals.
He followed one Lalu Hanuman, who informed us he’s a Guyanese who hails from Barbados, via London. While his residence, of course, doesn’t disqualify him from making suggestions, one wonders whether it wouldn’t have helped a tad if he’d returned to link up with Jeffrey to ensure, as the latter said, that “rubber hits the road”. In the meantime, its all “airy fairy” speculations, ent it?
The fatal problem with all these proposals isn’t about whether they’d ‘work” or not. This’ll always be an unknown – since the fact that a particular proposal might have worked in one locale doesn’t meant that it would work here. To paraphrase Tolstoy’s aphorism on families: “All functional societies are alike; each dysfunctional society is messed up in its own way.” Or to put it another more grounded way, no one plaster can cure every political sore out there.
But these fellas would most likely retort plaintively, “But at least we should give it a try since if we keep doing the same thing again and again, we’re just guaranteeing the same result!” But the fly in the ointment is who’s the “we” these fellas are talking about? In the end the massive changes in the political environment and structures they are advocating can only be implemented by the PPP and PNC acting together.
But most pertinently, the changes – such as executive power sharing and new electoral mechanisms – will mean the demise of the leadership of the two parties as we know them. Do these worthies think the incumbents will commit political hara kiri to institute changes that have no guarantee of working, but to top it off means they’ll have to step aside or play diminished roles??
The real world and real people don’t work like that!!
Even the Mahatma bulldozed his opponents to ensure his protégé Nehru remained top dog!!
…on COVID-19 response
Your Eyewitness returns to the vexed topic of triangular pegs in round holes in this fight against COVID-19. By now you’d think even the non-medical-non-scientific worthies who’ve been foisted on us would understood that until we get a vaccine all we can do is test, trace and isolate until we reach a point of no new infections.
But we’re then come a full circle, haven’t we?? How do we ever know there’s no new infections unless we’re testing?? The question is why haven’t we been more aggressive in getting testing strips and equipment for conducting the tests? OK…we know you can’t get them on the street corners and even the US has challenges. But hey…Barbados has been able to get supplies to up their testing, so why not us?
Then there’s tracing. Can we really say we’ve put the infrastructure in place to do this kind of field work when the inevitable wave hits us?? What are we waiting for?? And finally – isolation.
Can you believe rum shops are still open?? Where’s Ramjattan when you need him??
…on Granger
Once again, we’re hearing Granger’s under attack by “hard liners” in the PNC and governmental hierarchies . Bollocks!
The man has supreme powers under the PNC and Guyana’s constitution to manners any mutiny!!
