There’s been a lot of talk about “poverty” stalking our not-so-fair land while money from oil gushes out from under the Atlantic by the Opposition before, during and after the Budget Debate!! Never mind that they’re the ones who gave away the “gushes” in such binding fashion, we’re getting peanuts while the Oil majors are skinning their teeth all the way to their banks. And let’s not get sucked in by this cussing out of “capitalist economic rapists”. Remember the Chinese Govt-owned oil giant CNOOC’s raking in 25% of the ill-gotten gains!! Well, let’s remember Comrade Deng’s aphorism that “it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white – once it catches mice!!” – for our own development!! The Chinese have done quite well with their (black) capitalist cat, thank you!!
Anyhow, the Opposition bemoaned that 48% of our people living in “poverty” as of 2019 – when they were in office! As to whether they did anything to bring down that percentage they (coyly) didn’t say. But the first Billion-dollar contract they gave to one of their friendly fund raisers and cronies to build a “stadium” at Durban Park certainly didn’t do anything to lower it!! $500 million still can’t be accounted for!! But the question of that “poverty” measure was questioned since after we were promoted from being a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) under the first PNC government to a High-Income Country under the PPP!! While the qualification for being “poor” keeps getting raised, the US poor still has more income than most of our “middle class”! In a word, poverty’s always relative!
Anyhow, it now appears that the income method of measuring poverty has its own problems – for instance folks invariably understate their income. They don’t like paying taxes, if the truth be told!! And even their “expenditure” is problematical as we well know. We’re now assured that money alone doesn’t measure “poverty” – man doesn’t live by bread alone, remember?? So, we were informed about “multidimensional poverty”. Seems there are other aspects to poverty than not having money – such as school attendance, educational achievement, barriers of access to health services, unemployment, food insecurity, and overcrowding in homes.
Now this might just overturn some entrenched ideas about who’re poor in Guyana. Which has been used by opportunistic politicians to foster resentment they exploit in explosive riots against “richer” groups! So let’s see what this might just reveal. For school attendance – which group are more rural and their kids might slip under the radar on school attendance?? Don’t the cities and municipalities have better access to the top “premier” schools and health facilities?? And so on and so forth??
Will the rural natives now rise up with their pitchforks??
…Ole St Valentine
Well, Friday’s gonna be Valentine Day…and a whole lotta chocolates and flowers will be sold!! So who was this Valentine guy whose name was appropriated to romantic love?? Interestingly (to your Eyewitness!) he was a Roman Catholic monk – who appears to’ve followed the Biblical dictum – “Lord, give me chastity -but not yet!!” The Roman Emperor Claudius hadn’t converted to Christianity and was trying to stave off the new religion that was attracting converts in the multitudes.
In addition to feeding them to the lions, he banned Christian marriages – to stop them from “multiplying” when he only wanted “subtracting?? – and this is where Valentine stepped in. He kept on performing marriages and was executed on Feb 14 for his efforts – after a long period of imprisonment. Seems he had some skin in the love game since he wrote a love note to his jailor’s daughter before losing his head.
He’s also the patron saint of beekeeping, epilepsy, the plague, fainting and traveling. Just so you know!!
Haitians
After years of holding up his hands to the heavens like a Biblical prophet for some relief for the beleaguered Haitians, your Eyewitness saw President Trump just cut the funding that kept the few foreign police peacekeepers going! Oy vey!!
