…is it all Town Clerk’s Vanity?
Whatever else we may think of the poet Shelley (too much of a libertine?) he certainly gave rulers who act as if their reputations will live through eternity, something to think about with his poem “Ozymandias”. He tells of the vanity of the Pharoah we know as Ramses II – also called Ozymandias – who back in 1300BC ordered a gigantic Sphinx with his face sculpted on, to announce his glory.
Shelly tells of a modern day traveller who reports of the irony of the ruins – into which this statue has been reduced in the sands of the desert – contraposed with the words still visible on its base: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Thousands must’ve died to build that statue – but to what end? Wouldn’t Ramses II have been better served if he’d allowed those who perished for his vanity, to live?
Well…it does seem we have some modern day Ramseses alive and well in Guyana. Look at all the monuments being created at the cost of billions and billions of dollars – even as thousands are being thrown onto the breadlines with the economy heading southwards. There are the Independence Arches, D’Urban Park Stadium, Carifesta Ave (soon to be Ave of the Caribbean) and finally, Presidential Park – just to mention some that just came into your Eyewitness’s mind.
Towards what end are these being built? With what we know to be the state of global warming – going up…up…and awayyyy!! – how many years do our leaders think our coastland, (already under six feet UNDER sea level), will be ABOVE water? Aren’t all the monuments being built in a worse situation than with Ramses’s statue in the sands? At least that was visible to a forlorn and probably lost traveller? Who’s going to see the busts of our Presidents at Merriman’s Mall under 50 feet of Amazonian-muddied Atlantic water?
Your Eyewitness is sure there’s some rhyme to this apparent madness for building monuments. There were, after all, these visitors for Jubilee who had to be persuaded that things were better. But the Presidential Mall? Was this project commissioned from “on high” as were the others in and around Georgetown? Or is this just the work of the Svengali behind the Mayoral Chair – no other than our once and future Royston King?
For him to be strutting around so cockily – what with dragging vendors out from Stabroek Market and dumping them into muddy waters over in Hadfield Street and then this latest parking meter escapades – he has to have friends in high places, nuh?
Vanity of vanities…all is vanity!
…and The Lady Mayor
Your humble Eyewitness isn’t being snide. You do know the official title of a “Lord” is prefixed with the article “the”, nuh? Like in “The Lord Harrington” or “The Lord Mayor”…with the female equivalent being, like, “The Lady Mayor Chase-Green”. Anyhow Lady Chase-Green (you drop the “The” when referring to them”) seems quite recalcitrant about how she went about procuring those parking meters for Georgetown.
But you can’t blame her, can you? Did you REALLY think Lady Macbeth consulted her servants when she decided to do the dirty? (Murder most foul!!) But you gotta hand it to this young’un Sherod Duncan…he certainly rejected being treated like the hired help – just because of the title “Lady” being conferred on the good lady.
Folks will just have to give their support to Duncan on these matters when he refuses to genuflect to Her Lady Mayor and calls a spade “as spade”.
Or a rip off a “rip off”!
…in rice
OK…OK This fella Doerga knows hemp. But surely he’s trying to score (cheap) political points (or smoking something!) by claiming the PPP should’ve shipped a lower grade of rice to Venezuela. We were getting twice the world market price and we shoulda shortchanged them?
Jeez! No wonder Venezuela cancelled the contract!
