Your Eyewitness wonders why some in the Opposition are getting their drawers and bucktas in knots over the PPP incorporating projects to induce folks from communities that usually don’t vote for them to change their minds. How else do political parties get votes, if not by doing things for people?? But then we’re dealing with a bunch of folks who knocked off 7,000 sugar workers who used to vote for the PPP, but had switched to them to tip the scale and get them into government in 2015. And were surprised when they were promptly booted out in 2020!!
The problem is that we’ve been a house divided so long that we don’t know how to move out of that zero-sum mindset and transition to the win-win world that beckons. Up until the end of 2025, the Opposition would most likely continue to show that meanness of spirit that’s held them in thrall since the (in)famous split of the PPP in 1955. Are they bitter they let the tsunami of oil money slip out of their hand?? Or are they telling us that, if they had controlled the spigot, they wouldn’t have spent on PPP erstwhile supporters and get them to switch??
Your Eyewitness is reminded of an old ballad by the Nobel Prize singer-poet Bob Dylan, released as America plunged into its tumultuous sixties that changed them forever: The times are a changin”:
Come gather ‘round people/ Wherever you roam/ And admit that the waters/ Around you have grown/ And accept it that soon/ You’ll be drenched to the bone/ If your time to you is worth savin’
And you better start swimmin’/ Or you’ll sink like a stone/ For the times they are a-changin’
Come writers and critics/ Who prophesize with your pen/ And keep your eyes wide/ The chance won’t come again/ And don’t speak too soon/ For the wheel’s still in spin/ And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’/ For the loser now/ Will be later to win/ For the times they are a-changin’
Come senators, congressmen/ Please heed the call/ Don’t stand in the doorway/ Don’t block up the hall/ For he that gets hurt/ Will be he who has stalled/ The battle outside ragin’/ Will soon shake your windows/ And rattle your walls/ For the times they are a-changin’
Come mothers and fathers/ Throughout the land/ And don’t criticize/ What you can’t understand/ Your sons and your daughters/ Are beyond your command/ Your old road is rapidly agein’/ Please get out of the new one/ If you can’t lend your hand/ For the times they are a-changin’
Will the Opposition not change?? Do they want to go the way of the Dodo and become extinct??
…Village development
Your Eyewitness looks back and asks what happened to the plans of the African Business Roundtable, founded in 2016 with so many expectations: “The sustainable development of Guyana’s economy; The economic re-vitalisation of African villages in Guyana; The nurturing of African entrepreneurship, especially among youth; The establishment of partnerships for sustainable growth; The establishment of business linkages with African-Guyanese businesses in the diaspora and the hosting of business expos, from time to time, the nurturing of Caribbean trade linkages for African-Guyanese businesses and the nurturing of south-south trade linkages with the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa; The fostering of joint ventures with other ethnic and business groups in Guyana; Working with PSC, the GCCI and the GMSA to build bridges; The provision of think tank position papers, incubator and business services to the Guyanese community in partnership with other groups and stakeholders; the development of competitive, sustainable, job-creating African businesses across Guyana and in the diaspora”.
They claimed to already have “A full-service banking licence; Nurturing of an Association of African-Guyanese Construction Companies which meets at the headquarters weekly.”
…more traffic??
In his meditation on human interconnectedness, John Donne advises: “Send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” So, Pressie’s announcement that our bridges will toll for no one is a new take on interconnectedness?
