…for Guyana
As the PNC stubbornly holds on to power, some folks are wondering why all the fussin’ and fightin’ when they know they’ll have to give it up sooner or later. But clearly, they’re thinking “later” …maybe not as “late” as the tyrants of Haiti have strung out their rule (some 200 years!!), but late enough to make themselves set for life.
But, in their regime’s death throes, the PNC are setting into motion forces that may stunt our development for as long as the Haitian nightmare. One of these forces is the signing of various contracts wherein thousands of acres in the Ogle area, near the airport, are being given up. Before the elections, they were boasting of the “development” to create a futuristic city in the abandoned sugar fields.
But why should the development of a new city be a force for backwardness? For the answer, we should look over in Equatorial Guinea, which, after their oil discovery at the turn of the century, as an impoverished country with a comparable small population like ours, they suddenly possessed the “highest per capita income” in Africa!! Comparable to the US!! In the first decade, more than US$100 billion in revenues were generated, but the Equidorians remained as impoverished as ever. What happened? We will just look at one description of the enclave outside their capital of Malabo…much like what’s promised at Ogle, compared to the squalor of, say, our Albuoystown, to suggest a modern “tale of two cities”.
“Meanwhile, on the border of (the) city next to the airport, the gates and walls of private oil industry compounds open onto manicured lawns, landscaped hedges and flowers, paved roads with speed limits and fire hydrants, stately suburban homes with SUVs in garages, and sprawling office and industrial complexes.
The largest complex by itself generated enough electricity to power the entire country’s electricity needs 24 hours per day every day. Food to feed expatriate employees was shipped from Europe and the United States. The luxurious homes in which expatriate management lived were serviced by their own sewage and septic systems, and appointed with flat screen televisions, wireless internet, and landline phone service with Houston area codes. Each house had an Equatoguinean maid, and the office complexes had Equatoguinean janitorial services. The compound also included pools, gyms, basketball and tennis courts, restaurants, bars; and at one, a movie theater and small golf course. Malaria, endemic to the Equatorial Guinea just on the other side of the wall, had been all but eradicated on the compounds. Management-level expatriate oil workers and their wives living in these lavish ‘suburbs of Houston’ received a 75 percent salary increase for working in a ‘hardship’ post.”
That’s the PNC vision for Guyana.
…at the CCJ
It’s not difficult to predict what’ll happen next Wednesday at the CCJ. As the CCJ legal luminaries had to ruefully remind the PNC when their “33 is not the majority of 65” was supported by our Court of Appeal, the answer in the Constitution really needed “no gloss”. But it’s not “gloss” the PNC was looking for, was it?? They were just trying a thing – to delay matters – like now.
But clearly, our Appellate Court Justices have no pride as legal professionals, after they were rapped on the knuckles by their superiors!! It’s not that they’re gluttons for punishment – just gluttons, period!! The Jurisdictional bar raised by the PNC will be summarily brushed aside, since the CCJ Act of 2004, Sec 26 – which is its “limiting clause” – explicitly only saved DECISIONS by the CoA made BEFORE 2004. It doesn’t apply prospectively!!
On the substantive matter of what are “valid votes”, the criteria for the recount will be referred to.
And for any other C&O, the PNC will be pointed to an elections petition!! But the PNC will find some other technicality!!
…in Guyanese race relations
In the past, after our polarising elections, we went along as if nothing happened; since, generally, our opinions remained private.
But that was before Facebook, wasn’t it?
