March! Rigging and other anniversaries
The COVID-19 pandemic which, naturally and obviously, has “embraced” Guyana – with some reckless co-operation from many “don’t care” myopic citizens – still attracts local attention, heart-break, funding and contention.
The consequences of flooding – from Mahaica to the Pomeroon – consistently impact use of taxpayer subsidies, food-prices and infrastructural funding.
Local contrived “controversies” regarding use of oil revenues, gas-to-shore projects and oil sector local content practical initiatives; as well as considerations relevant to how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will impact economies such as ours, all make my lead issue today seem somewhat inappropriate. Even irrelevant. But no! Is it not easy for me to become a national “see-far” man to predict major socio-political contention, even upheavals, as talk of local elections becomes louder right now?
So bear with me and the following brief but timely reminders and cautions.
****
Sordid histories, current miseries
I’m no High School nor University graduate steeped in Political Science or the philosophy of democracy and elections. My “analyses” are based solely on experience inclusive of personal professional participation in elections on behalf of a major political entity. So, as I might bore some with repeating, my offering is from practical – but “opinionated” – man-in-the-street involvement for man-in-the-street, working-class readership. (But welcome to those of more lofty, academic status.)
So, many of us accept that periodic, constitutional elections are a hallmark of democratic, free law-based societies. And we can also appreciate that sometimes, even in the more democratic “equitable” societies, elections can generate greed, tensions, diversions, even deadly violence as persons vie for electoral leadership. (Whatever their personal motivations during these contests.)
I was only eight years old in 1953 when my grandmother proudly voted under the first ever revolutionary adult suffrage system. Just imagine! Descendants of slaves and indentured actually voted in a PPP bi-racial, national administration. (You-all must read up on how Cheddi Jagan had to quell Forbes Burnham’s earliest demands. Including what to wear to be sworn in!!)
Our drama-filled electoral history now records that the British swiftly truncated the 1953 people’s victory. Jagan was suspected of being sympathetic to Soviet preferences.
My grandmother again took me to political campaign meetings in 1957. She died in 1958 but left me with an early sense of “politics”. Without my even realising it then.
Even though I realised that Burnham’s selfish machinations tainted the campaigns of 1961 and 1964 – following race-inspired riots and killings, by 1968 when “wholesale” PNC rigging began, I still voted PNC feeling that Burnham would “saved and help black people” alas, as election thievery became a staple (1968-1985) I saw both “Black people”, Indo and others flee to Barbados, Brooklyn and the Bronx. En masse!
Today for me, frankly speaking, when the PNC Brigadier-Leader agreed to the CARICOM – scrutinised recount of votes in 2020, I still experience a supreme irony!
For years – 1968-1985 – the CARICOM leaders turned a blind-eye-to Burnham’s politics of bullyism and blatant rigging. (After all, he was an architect of both CARIFTA and CARICOM whilst Cheddi J. was always an outsider.) But a new-breed CARICOM (1992-2020) could not condone anti-democratic tendencies here when not a feature in their own homes. Hence the 2020 CARICOM-inspired recount which assisted the Brigadier to save some face. Yet I predict some PNC-inspired misery when any new elections loom. (Tell me not of any amorphous, fake, counterfeit “APNU”- or deadmeat AFC.)
Check the rumblings from the usual three suspects at GECOM. Watch for impediments against fresh continuous registration. Listen to why local elections can’t be held if the PNC does not get its way.
You know what!? I would give into all the demands, conditions and procedures the PNC wants! Why? After March to July 2020, never can my old party win again!
*******
Post-prosecution justice for same
I’ll “prosecute” this issue once again in a coming column as this space left can’t do “justice” to it. I’m referring to my own view that the justice system in many democratic, law-dominated societies – frankly speaking – extend more “justice” to the guilty than to the victims who suffered from thefts, assaults, character assassination, fraud, death.
To me, to ensure that the innocent are not wrongfully punished the laws actually “protect” the guilty. (A recent appeal against the sentence for a conviction for a brutal well-proven murder spoke of “the judge not stating exactly how he arrived at 25 years”; separate hearings for probation reports; sentencing being a matter for the trial judge …; consideration of “when a sentence is seen to have been bad in law, wrong or manifestly excessive”.)
So after even a confession and conviction for murder, the convict must receive an appropriate sentence. Justice must be done. For whom?
*******
March month! Celebrate! Cry!
Obviously every one of the twelve months will have special meaning for persons, communities, nations.
March is the birth month of a famous late uncle of mine, my wife and two close friends – Vic and Tracy (Ho-ho!) Desmond Hoyte and Cheddi Jagan were March-month fellows too. (Cheddi died in March!)
GAWU’s heroine Kowsilla was crushed to death in March 1964, a month that saw numerous Indo-Afro murderous atrocities born of racial politics.
March 2020 (to July 2020) now will always remind even the young of one political party’s desperation for power. Even through internationally-witnessed, attempted political thievery.
But wait! March is also the ladies month worldwide! Hall March!
*******
Ponder-seriously!
● 1) Since last week’s column, the print media reported multimillions of dollars in cocaine/cannabis drug seizures. What a business sector!
The President seems to think hemp cultivation will mitigate the cannabis Sub-Sector. Ho-ho-ho.
● 2) I appreciate that Doctors Jeffrey and Hinds can’t afford to drop descriptions like “installed government, questionable, suspect elections, flimsy majority”.
For if that “consistency” is abandoned, no new (truthful) narrative is available to them. Only loss of suspect “credibility”. It’s a pity the PPP emboldened them.
● 3) When I read of the Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region (Seven) “stepping up security” because of the criminal intrusions of Venezuelan Syndicatos, I feel a little secure because of the American (oil companies) presence.
The Syndicatos are a headache. So just imagine the Venezuelan army doing “a Putin”.
`Til next week
(allanafenty@yahoo.com)
