Whenever will those banners exhorting people to “VOTE” for this party or that party and those pictures of the people who are now the winners and losers at last November’s general elections stop adorning lamp posts and traffic light signal canisters in the city.
Having been assailed by the elements for several months now and having long ceased to serve their purpose they have now become an eyesore in a city that already has its own fair share of eyesores. Time was when those cross-the-road banners slung from one lamp appeared taut and you could read clearly what was written on them. Now they have become saggy and droopy and somehow their presence gives those parts of the city where they still hang an aura of grubbiness that exaggerates the disorder that is already par for the course in Georgetown.
One can think of a good few reasons why these objects should be removed and carted off to some dump site – a legal one, that is, to be properly disposed of (and let’s not even think of contracting the Mayor and City Council to do the job. The poor blighters can’t even do what they were elected to do right now)
The first reason why we should recruit a group of unemployed young men and give them the disposal job has to do with the fact that the persistence of these posters and banners coincide with a garbage crisis in the City. In the language of the streets is garbage pun garbage. The second reason has to do with what must surely be the disinclination of the electorate to have to stare continually at badly disfigured pictures of the people that they voted for or did not vote for, as the case may be. After all, none of the presidential or prime ministerial Candidates whose pictures still hang around are FILM STARS or what one might call ‘easy on the eye.”
Now there is another reason, perhaps a more serious one, why these unsightly objects should be done away with. Once they hang around for much longer their presence might well give rise to the view that there is credence to the rumour that the PPP/C plans to call another election in a few months time to try to see if they could get back their majority in the National Assembly and with it the Speaker’s chair.
Mind you one might have thought that if the PPP/C planned to go the polls again it could afford to dispose of the existing lot of banners and posters (though perhaps they might retain the poster of President Ramotar that hangs on the eastern wall of Freedom House since that one appears to have defied the elements and remains in remarkably good shape) and go for a new set since, as far as campaign funds are concerned there is – as the saying goes MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM.
By contrast, You would think that it was APNU and the AFC that might be tempted to recycle their campaign material since God only knows who they will turn to this time around for campaign money. Mind you, the fact that they don’t appear to be ‘pulling together’ – at least for the present – is not the best of news. If they had any sense they would use what might well turn out to be a short-term parliamentary majority to try to get legislation passed on Campaign Financing and The Use of the State Media For electioneering. That at least might level the playing field somewhat if Donald decides to ‘go again.’
Speaking of posters and pictures and faces of politicians………….we really ought to find some reason to cause Mr. Jagdeo’s picture to appear in the print media again and to cause the NCN newscasts to begin with the phrase “President Bharrat Jagdeo has said………..” It’s not easy, you know……moving from a condition of having your picture and your name in the news every day to being regarded as yesterday’s man; though it has to be said that from all that is happening around us you would be a fool to think that the ex-president is in fact yesterday’s man.
Still, the kind of man that he is he probably misses the limelight plus the fact that as a friend of his put it the other day he now has to stop at the right lights……….and even if there’s lots of things to compensate for him not being president any longer and even if he’s now lost that full head of hair which he had when he first surfaced in the PPP Jagdeo is still an under-fifty flouncing and bouncing big which is more than can be said for the current crop of leaders and that alone probably qualifies him to have his picture appear in the papers from time to time.
