What’s with… the War on Drugs

Now that the dust is settling on the fallout from the Sept 1st elections – and might just bury the PNC like Pompeii after Vesuvius exploded!! – your Eyewitness thinks it’s time he gives top billing to some other issues confronting our dear Mudland. While some hardcore PNCites fret about their party’s fate, they’d be reassured that when Pompeii was excavated 2000 years later, most of the inhabitants were very well preserved in lifelike poses. Imagine 2000 years from now, our descendants seeing the petrified remains of Norton choking Black Pudding Man for his (disastrous) political advice!!
Now on our challenges, right up there gotta be Mad Maduro – through his defence Minister Padrino threatening to rain fire and brimstone (which is what they used to call missiles back in Biblical times!) – on us?? Why? Because we dared support the Yanks upping the ante in their war against the shipment of drugs (cocaine) from benighted Venezuela!! The Yanks, of course, have assembled a veritable armada in the Caribbean Sea off their coast! And have since literally blown two boats out of the water – which their intelligence had indicated were transporting cocaine!!
Some have quibbled that these were pretty small boats and it was like using a hammer to smash a fly!! But what the heck?? Do these Doubting Thomases know that the entire annual global supply of cocaine is just about 3300 tonnes?? So even the one tonne the boats could ferry is a significant haul – worth some US$50 million wholesale?? We know to our cost – through some significant busts in the last year – that tonnes of cocaine coming from Venezuela by plane were nabbed in Reg One!! Of significance is that one interdiction revealed how the drug cartels were corrupting our law enforcement officials – which, if allowed to continue, would transform us into another Medellin, controlled by the cartels!!
So hell yes!!… We’re for drug interdiction!! To those like Mad Maduro’s bestie in Caricom, Ralphie Boy Gonsalves – who carry on about the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace” and might be disturbed – we refer them to T&T’s Kamla’s pungent response!! Those who know it…feel it! Didn’t Pressie go out of his way at Ralphie Boy’s urging and sign the Argyle Agreement with Mad Maduro to guarantee the aforementioned “zone of peace”?? And didn’t Mad Maduro kick us in the teeth for our efforts – even before the ink was dry on the agreement?
America’s very serious about drugs being used by Mad Maduro as another weapon in his non-kinetic war against them. Then there’s the elections the madman rigged – even after assuring the Yanks in the Barbados Agreement that he wasn’t gonna play dirty pool!!
Rendition and try him a la Noriega!!

…the GPSU?
GPSU’s president-for-life Patrick Yarde has roused himself from the slumber he evidently was enjoying during the election season – unlike, say, TUC’s sinecured Lewis, who was landing haymakers on the PPP! Last year, he cut an agreement with the PPP Government in which public servants and other Government workers received a retroactive 10 per cent salary increase effective from the beginning of 2024. Additionally, they agreed that public servants would receive a further 8 per cent salary increase on top of that this year. This increase was paid to public servants in July. This meant that public workers received an 18+ per cent compounded increase in their salaries!!
Well, Patrick’s now demanding an ADDITIONAL 25 per cent for 2024!! Which would bring the 2024 and 2025 increases to over a compounded 50 per cent!! Like what APNU Ministers had given themselves!! And for 2026 an additional 35 per cent!! Well, your Eyewitness – and Pressie, according to recent statements – knows that inflation’s taking a big bite out of every worker’s salary.
Let’s hope they reach – NOT strike! – a happy medium!!

…paddy and rice
Rice farmers are complaining that the $2800/bag being offered for paddy’s gonna destroy them. Sadly, the world rice market prices have been tumbling since last year. The govt gotta follow the US’ lead and subsidise this strategic commodity!!