Unfair… incumbency?

The PPP will never learn, will they?? Here it was, the EU Observer Mission had just chastised them for exploiting the advantages of “incumbency”!! That’s being the Government, for those not paying attention at the back of the class! – to create “an uneven playing field” for the Opposition!! You know…opening schools, hospitals, roads, bridges etc, where their big wigs in Govt show up and get free media coverage!! Yet, what are they doing right now?? That’s right – opening up solar farms; announcing total WiFi coverage of the hinterland; doling out house lots to submerged folks in Berbice etc!! And getting that media coverage!! Not only from the State media but the Opposition-aligned ones!!
OK…OK…your Eyewitness knows that elections are five years away. But wouldn’t the PPP be crowing about the additional tens of thousands of lots handed out – not to mention making GT the showpiece of the Caribbean – etc when those elections roll around? And wouldn’t that be the “incumbency advantage” the EU insisted they exploited?? The question, of course, is what should the Government do?? Should they invite Opposition politicians to these unveilings and announcements?? Will those worthies show up since the EU insists they’re part and parcel of our democratic system?? Your Eyewitness has his doubts seeing as to how after the elections before this one, the LOO – the Opposition Leader, not the John!! – refused to even shake Prezzie’s hand – much less join in ribbon cutting!!
So should the Government self-effacingly hide their (many) lights under a bushel – or as many bushels as it takes? But wouldn’t folks quickly latch on to the fact that under the bushels popping up all over the country were Government achievements?? Bushels here and bushels there might then be condemned by the next EU-EOM in 2030 as signalling that “uneven playing field” they’d complained about!! Hadn’t the PPP realised that elections are no playing matter – and that the playing field should be even??
But your Eyewitness thinks he’s got the solution to the dilemma posed by the EU-EOM. Why don’t the “free press” media also cover the (myriad?) activities of the Opposition?? Equal opportunity and equal treatment and all that – the “free press” proclaimed mantra!! Before writing this piece, your Eyewitness scoured the Opposition parties’ Facebook pages – “I’m on Facebook, therefore I exist!! – and there were oodles of cover-worthy earthshaking activities!! In all fairness he couldn’t see head nor hair of (bald?) PNC leader Norton – but there was Sanction Man who’d ousted him!! He was arguing with a bearded fella about some Leguan Masjid big ones tearing out a Mandir habitué’s flower plants!! Of national import, innit??
Norton’s parliamentary rep Chicken Man was on a walkabout – sadly not handing out Chicken legs – but still!!

…governmental excitement
Our Eastern neighbour Suriname just celebrated 50 years – their Golden Jubilee – of independence!! Your Eyewitness is a tad jealous because while we were ahead of them in this regard, their post experience was so much more newsworthy!! Right off the bat – scarred by OUR pre- Independence violent PNC-inspired racial riots – 100,000 of their citizens fled to Holland in 1973, the year before their independence!! But in a gesture that our British overlords never made, the Dutch gave the new government a golden handshake of 3.5 million Dutch Guilders – equivalent to US$1.7 billion!!
Then within a decade, they had an army coup by the drug-trafficking, former army Sergeant Bouterse – who executed a dozen civil society activists – and ruled as a dictator for over a decade!! During which their Maroon African tribes in the jungle – who’d fled there during slavery – waged a guerilla war of secession!! The Surinamese so liked Bouterse’s rule that they later ELECTED him to office!!
Now they’re about to enjoy the joys of oil!!

…infiltration
The Brazilian army just completed a joint operation to monitor our common south-western border – through which Venezuelans may infiltrate. We should now invite the US Marines who were in T&T to do the same in our Cuyuni River border!!