…shall be the (WPA) cry
Old people say that if you play with puppies, you’ll get bitten by fleas. By the look of interplay between the PNC and its erstwhile “partners” in APNU and the coalition government, it’s clear that when you play with an OLD dog with “dutty tricks”, you get eaten up and swallowed whole by the dog itself!
Not long after the coalition slipped into office, there were rumblings by Dr David Hinds about lack of “consultations” between the WPA and the PNC under the APNU umbrella. He’s since been sporadically making this complaint to no avail, and in fact has now become like the proverbial Guyanese “blow-blow”. This weekend, he again filed his complaint in the press – and once again, your Eyewitness predicts he’ll be ignored like the fly on the back of a thick-skinned elephant.
Now, why is this so? First and foremost, we have to examine what exactly is the WPA. While it can’t be equated with the other ½ man parties that also coalesced to form APNU, its members really have no leverage to demand any greater say than the members of those other parties!
The 1992 elections proved the WPA had no mass support, and wasn’t even a “party” anymore. In fact, it officially ceased to be one at about 2005, when its members balked at becoming part of a “Third Force” to form a wedge between the PPP and PNC. At that time, their sole MP, Sheila Holder, helped to launch the AFC, and the WPA wasn’t even a rump – just a bunch of individuals with a reputation for solid activism, earned in the seventies and eighties.
Their most solid political asset was their principled stand against the PNC back in the day – and this they sold rather cheaply when they went into the APNU coalition with just one Minister in the Cabinet – the aged Rupert Roopnaraine. The PNC played the old game of co-opting several other members, most notably Ogunseye and Thomas, as “advisers” – with the latter also getting some serious positions in SARA and GUYSUCO in the twilight of his long career.
As such, Hinds isn’t even a voice in the wilderness crying, “Make ye way for the coming of the Rodneyite revolution!” As an avowed self-declared supporter of the Government, he confessed he’s criticised by the old WPA constituency for criticising “we own”. But even if the WPA wasn’t caught in the politics of patronage in a common electoral base, the disequilibrium of size that has also emasculated the AFC would’ve been their fate.
In a divided polity like Guyana’s, the wages of a small party coalescing with either of the two “big ones” is certain asphyxiation!
…for turn around?
Back in the 1960s, when we were being destabilised to ensure the Jagan-led PPP government’s removal because of their equivocation as to which side of the iron curtain they stood, the CIA was the point man for the Americans. Their mullings on matters Guyanese are out there on the World Wide Web now that their files have been declassified. Their assessment of the then leaders — like Jagan and Burnham — should give pause to the pillow talk of the present lot, who may be in the arms of one big brother or another.
One interesting prediction in one of those files — made by the then U.S. Ambassador — was that Guyana’s political trajectory would follow the African South Saharan countries more than that of our Latin American neighbours. Now, considering this prediction was made almost 50 years ago, you’ve got to hand it to the analytical prowess of the U.S. diplomats!
And it’s for this reason that your <<Eyewitness>> isn’t too sanguine about the coming oil “boom” getting us out from being Haiti’s neighbour at the bottom of the barrel!
…for US IDB funds
Historically, the IDB’s been the largest donor of development funding in our post-independence era. Expect that to head south — literally and figuratively — now that Trump’s nixed the U.S. contribution.
