Frankly Speaking

Escapist again? Guilty!  As death by murder and mis-adventures stalk our newspapers’ front pages and as numerous commentators and columnists contend with our politics and governance in daily robust manner, I tire of such issues.

As a citizen of this sorry Republic, formerly somewhat “political” and still with a lively interest in its survival, I am given to wondering: of what significance is Guyana to the U.S.A.

Here I go again with my now annual lamentation and enquiry.

Quite frequently over the past decade, I have voiced, in print and on television, the habit of describing my Native Land Guyana, as “This Big, Beautiful, Blighted Land”.

The lead issue today resides in the fact that I notice this newspaper advertising its vacancies for “Reporters” and the various reports in the dailies this past Monday regarding the fatal shooting on Orange Walk in Georgetown.

“… on and after 26th May 1966 … her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom shall have no responsibility for the government of the territory which, immediately before that day, constitutes the colony of British Guiana which, on and after that day, is to be called Guyana”.

I was most definitely, committed to my more light-hearted, escapist mode in planning today’s brief offering.

Without even being asked, I repeat that it is not laziness which makes me repeat some views and themes. 

It was on Sunday of this week, during a nine-hour blackout, that I persevered with the notes of this (type of) Frankly Speaking mini-lecture you’re reading here.

In five days’ time it will be the first of May – May Day, Workers Day, take your pick.

Oh dear me… It’s not only because Guyana’s four major newspapers now feature about a “hundred” columnists, analysts and commentators that makes me unsure, intimidated sometimes, of what new issue to confront.

I suppose that, sub-consciously, it is one of my pastimes: paying attention to the criticisms by individuals and groups against their former colleagues and organisations.

I suppose that my journalistic superiors and senior political columnists (and “satirists”) will point out that the concepts or issues indicated in my caption need no “versus”. 

  A Really Good Friday as Prophesied At my age and stage I have little enthusiasm to vilify, demonise and condemn senior public figures in our Big Beautiful Blight of a society.

Two columns ago I had indicated a more robust personal interest in the Constitution of our Co-operative Republic.

Regular readers and my editor will recognize this as one of my “lazy-day” offerings. 

It’s the Attorney/Politician Nigel Hughes I mean.  And the Constitution in question here is the Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana (1980, with Amendments to 12th August 2003) which governs the national, even personal, lives of Mr Nigel and all citizens of the forty-three-year old Republic.

Do you realize that it was a mere thirteen years after 1763 that the American colonists, (rather “rebelliously”), declared their break-away and independence from Britain?.

A name sake, Allan, as in Allan Fiedkou contributed, for the consideration of Linden’s Jaycees, the description Mashramani, when that organization wanted an appropriate name for their series of events to usher in Guyana’s Republican status in February of 1970.

-A Meeting of Bernie’s Bandits Ordinary, working-class, proletarian, salt-of–the-earth Guyanese citizens often miss media reports of some significant events taking place here.