Your Eyewitness suspects he’s testing your patience, dear reader, by returning to this well-worn path. But while they mightn’t realize it, he cares about the Opposition’s survival. It’s nothing personal, but if “nature abhors a vacuum” – and rushes to fill it! – politicians abhor a power vacuum even more! And Mother Nature ain’t no slouch when it comes to filling vacuums? Have you seen what happens when there’s a hole in an aeroplane’s wall? Sucking all the passengers through that hole is Mother Nature’s way of filling the ALMOST atmospheric vacuum at 36,000 feet!!
And when it comes to PPP politicians, they’ll be sucking voters from the Opposition’s TRADITIONAL constituency at such a rate in the upcoming elections – Local and National – that it’ll take decades for them to recover, if ever!! And your Eyewitness’s concern stems from the fact that even if the PPP were angels, they’ll turn to the Dark Side with no Opposition!! Anakin was such a cute and good kid, wasn’t he?? But he became Darth Vader!! So, the bottom line is: we need a solid Opposition in Guyana, and your Eyewitness will be offering them some gratuitous advice, since he doesn’t want no Darth Vader running the show when he’s ready to “throw back” in his dotage!!
So, what should the Opposition NOT be doing?? Well, for starters, they should take some pointers from Dr Jagan – who was in Opposition for twenty-eight years!! Firstly, he didn’t try to overthrow the PNC Government by force – even though there was tremendous pressure from without and within for him to do so. And it wasn’t just a matter of the army not being “kith and kin”. Jagan insisted that any such attempt would result in a civil war worse than the one we experienced in the sixties! And asked whether, in such a small society as ours, we would be able to ever heal THOSE wounds!
Another lesson – which took Dr Jagan those twenty-eight years to learn – was that while you don’t have to play footsies with the Americans, you gotta tack in their direction. And right now, the Yanks don’t want no local unrest to mess with their investment in energy. So, what should they be DOING?? Well, your Eyewitness thinks it’s so obvious he’s surprised he even has to say it. Fact of the matter is that no matter what the PPP does, there’s gonna be a huge chunk of voters from even THEIR traditional constituency who’re teed off about the cost of living.
Rather than shooting themselves in the foot about a coup, they should push that “$1,000,000 in every pocket” ploy.
Just don’t identify it with Buxton!!
…to civil society’s modus operandi?
Now if, in a democracy, the “Opposition” was created to keep the Government on its toes, one has to ask why we need “civil society” organisations to be doing that job?? After all, civil society organisations evolved to deal with issues that folks thought Governments should be keeping their noses out of!! Meaning, things like burial societies and such like could be handled by the people, thank you. But something funny happened after WWII – “civil society” groups suddenly started taking on Governments!!
Was it because the political parties – especially the Opposition parties – weren’t giving some views expression?? But in that case, shouldn’t these “civil society” types touting those interests form another political party?? Or work directly to influence a political party that needs their votes?? But in Guyana, there’s another peculiar development – whether in or out of Government, a number of civil society groups just never agree with the PPP.
Can’t be about the PPP’s ideology – that’s now as regular as sliced bread!! So what is it?? Their breath?? Or, gasp!! – race??
…to WI rebuilding??
Your Eyewitness is still waiting to see some pattern developing from promises by Cricket administrators to get WI cricket back on its feet. He isn’t even looking to return to the glory days.
Just be competitive!!
