…vs dreams
Henry Jeffrey’s a funny fella. He spent almost two decades in the PPP/C Government – as a representative from the “C” yet when he writes his weekly column, you’d think he spent all that time locked away in some ivory tower, hoping for some knight (even in rusted armour) to rescue him!! This week, he took another swipe at the PPP for not being serious about “shared governance”: “how could any African Guyanese take Mr Bharrat Jagdeo seriously when at last Sunday’s launch of the PPP’s 2020 election campaign he claimed that the PPP ‘is the natural home for Afro-Guyanese?’”
Well, as a fella who drops ponderous quotes from all sorts of esoteric tomes at the drop of a hat, you’d have thought he’d offer some justification for his bald assertion. Is he not “Afro Guyanese”? Didn’t he find a home in the PPP along with the 58 per cent of non-Indian Ministers that was the average for the PPP during their 23 years in office? If his “home” was so “unnatural”, why quit only when the perks he demanded on being posted as Ambassador to Suriname wasn’t granted??
Anyhow, the point this founder-of-ANUG-who-supports-ANUG-but-is-not-a-member wanted to make was he’d insisted that political leaders at this juncture had to be “visionary”. But while Granger insisted he was a “see far man”, his rhetoric at the PNC launch wasn’t visionary enough! Too humdrum and banal! But Jeffrey misses the point: and if he’d remember his Sunday School lessons, he’d know that a real “see far” man – called “prophets”, had pronounced that when the time for a real reckoning arrives, “Old men shall dream dreams and young men shall have visions”.
But why go as far back as the prophets? If he listened to Jagdeo at the PPP rally, surely he’d heard the PPP candidate Irfaan Ali explain Granger’s dilemma. Granger’s an old man…his mind has become ossified…he can only remember the past and that’s what dreams are all about, aren’t they?? You may rearrange that past in your dreams, but you can’t come up something new – which is what “visions” are all about! And that’s why some of your dreams – like Granger’s!! – can be nightmares!!
But Irfaan Ali did more than just dissect Granger and exposed his constraints – as a young man capable of having visions, he offered a vision for the country. And he expressed it in the soaring prose as Jeffrey felt was necessary. As your Eyewitness wrote, “at one point seemed to be channelling MLK as he intoned with pitch-perfect delivery:
“Three score and ten years ago, the PPP was founded and for one brief, glorious moment all of the peoples of our land were united as one!”
Ali’s vision is to recreate that unity!!
…versus mamaguy
The PNC finally fessed up: they won’t be releasing ALL the details of the Revised Cummingsburg Accord!! Now your Eyewitness – plus everyone and their uncle – had figured that since it wasn’t even announced at their launch, at best if Ramjattan was going to be the PM Candidate, he’d agreed to a “morganatic” marriage. That’s when you marry a king or queen, but if they croak, you don’t succeed them!! So, at best, his chances of becoming President were less than those of a snowball surviving in hell!!
But Granger just announced that he hasn’t even picked a Prime Ministerial Candidate at this point – and will only do so AFTER the elections!! Frankly, your Eyewitness isn’t surprised – as you Dear Readers would know: he called this from day one!! Nagamootoo is “royalty” since the PNC figures that no one can match him with obsequiousness – not that Ramjattan didn’t try at the launch!!
This means that the PNC’s hiding something worse than screwing Ramjattan over. What could it be??
The mind boggles!!
…and tokenism
Joseph Harmon accused his former Chief-of-Staff, Brig Phillips, of being a “token Black” as the PPP’s PM Candidate!!
So, what was Moses Nagamootoo, whose powers were slashed rather than boosted as promised??!!
