What… goes around

The Brits seemed to’ve discovered that first-past-the-post (FPTP) can produce Governments whose Parliamentary power vastly exceeds their popular support. Their new Labour PM, Andy Burnham, wants electoral reform for Proportional Representation (PR) in their manifesto so every vote’s gonna count, and every voice is gonna be heard!! Admirable sentiments innit?? But here in Mudland, the suggestion arrives with a familiar, cynical colonial echo – ‘cause we’ve heard this sermon before and are still suffering for it!!
Back in 1964, they prescribed PR for BG, insisting the medicine was for “fairer” representation. The intended patient was Cheddi Jagan, and the desired outcome was his removal after he’d won the 1961 election under the Empire-wide FPTP system, by securing a Parliamentary majority with roughly 43 per cent of the vote. Suddenly, this electoral machinery that served Westminster became unsuitable for Georgetown!! The colonised electorate required a more sophisticated understanding of democracy – particularly when it kept electing the wrong man!!
This interpretation isn’t your Eyewitness’s concoction or coming from PPP folklore, or even somebody’s granpa vexing over a rum!! The American diplomatic record is remarkably candid, with a 1963 dispatch describing PR as the “most practical electoral device for replacing Premier Cheddi Jagan”!! Another dispatch recorded Britain’s Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandys’s preference for a Burnham–D’Aguiar Government, to which the Brits would grant independence!! Democracy apparently needed its RESULT decided before its principles could be celebrated!
The Cold War supplied the justification, with Jagan’s Marxism and alleged communist threat making his electoral victories inconvenient to Washington and London!! A declassified US memorandum records that Washington successfully urged Britain to impose PR and delay independence while the anti-Jagan forces were strengthened. So much for letting the natives work things out themselves after their long tutelage!!
In December 1964, the PPP increased its vote to approximately 46 per cent and remained the largest party – but the PNC and UF together held a Parliamentary majority, and were handed the Government!! Their combined support exceeded half the vote, so the arithmetic was legitimate!! Never mind the manipulation in engineering the rules and political circumstances to obtain that preferred (imperial) outcome!!
Now, PR itself needn’t stand accused – it definitely can represent voters more fairly. The question, however, is why the Brits considered it URGENTLY necessary in a colony while retaining FPTP at home for another six decades!! There’s even a little historical mischief in the names – Britain’s Burnham now advocates reform as a democratic advance, while BG’s Burnham benefited when the Brits deployed it as a Cold War instrument!!
Your Eyewitness welcomes Westminster’s conversion – but hopes they spare us the suggestion that the mother country has just invented electoral fairness!!
We were the demonstration project, and Cheddi paid the installation charge!!

…about Buxton??
As soon as he saw the headlines, your Eyewitness thought, “Here we go again!!” He’s talking, of course, about the contretemps in the Buxton-Vigilance area where law enforcement officials, from SOCU, weren’t only prevented from carrying out their duties, but were attacked by masked residents – a truck was torched and debris piled across a road and set ablaze, stopping all traffic!!
Sounds familiar?? The circumstances prompting SOCU’s action were familiarly depressing: kidnapped individuals (here two Surinamese) last seen in a car belonging to an OFAC-sanctioned resident’s wife, arrested for questioning at their Buxton home when all Hell broke loose!! It seems the laws of Guyana shouldn’t be applied to Buxton and its environs – and even the forces of law and order have gotta obtain visas to enter!!
But unlike the US’s ICE squads that jump into action AFTER the US border is crossed – the guardians of Buxton’s criminal fraternity pre-emptively have a mandate to ensure THEIR border is sacrosanct against Guyana’s law and order!!

…closer moves!
A US-based company has evidently stepped up to the plate – your Eyewitness thought it appropriate to use a Yankee analogy!! – to build 10,000 “affordable” homes in our dear Mudland!!
“Affordable” to us down here, or them up there??!!