By 10 am Eastern Standard Time on June 18th 2019, Guyanese, at home and within its extended borders, knew there would be a loser who deserved to lose and a winner who did not deserve to win.
We had already gone over the case – now resting with the Caribbean Court of Justice- with our common sense applications and though we’re not professing by any stretch to be legal minds, we did find some meaningful information in Laws of Guyana Title II Parliament 156 3 (Page 90 thru 91) which addressed the MP obligation to his list as follows: A member of the National Assembly elected on a list shall be disqualified from being a member of the Assembly if he or she in the prescribed manner declares that he or she will not support the list from which his or her name was extracted or declares that he or she abstain from supporting that list or declares his or her support for another list .
Legal gurus from the team that wooed the Defector’s heart have belabored this article under the thesis “the law is language” asking rhetorically, at call and response intervals, “did Defector do any of the prescriptions with the climatic response of no”.
We non gurus were asking, if he were allowed to do all that under prescription then why would springing his desertion of his assembly on the floor of Parliament be permissible and leaving the list not be a requirement of prescription, a structured process requiring the defector’s obligation to alert his Assembly that he was planning to sell them out?
It would only be the inverse of 156:3 and we expected the learned Attorney General to use this route, rather than the dual citizenship argument, since many of his team members were guilty of this thing he was now unearthing as an infraction.
But that didn’t happen.
So the country has, once again, divided into its bitter partisan huddle; having been forced to the polls -Forced Elections -by a law that lags so far behind politics that it’s no match for the cunning of the Beelzebubs of the profession who prey upon then purchase the reptilian souls of political prostitutes for just 29 pieces of silver.
This time promises to be different, though, as a certain block of voters, once more compliant than querulous, attack the temerity of the Opposition and excoriate the slackness of the Coalition.
About 60% of this electorate knows only know the 23 years of PPP oppression, mostly the eleven of the current Opposition Leader and how he transformed Georgetown into a place dedicated to both his ego and power, abandoning zoning laws to favor oversized buildings constructed to look down on the boxboard and assortment of zinc sheets that represent squatting villages; connecting them in a macabre kind of inclusivity that reminds those domiciled in either of these enclaves of the vendetta his crassness took to quality of life, as residential streets like Anira, saw a Bingo House on its Albert Street Corner, a lumber yard on it’s Oronoque Street corner and a 4 story storage bond, a veritable fire hazard, sitting in its midst.
Those who are a little older recall, with a combination of shame and rage how people would come to their neighborhoods to offer them jobs that required breaking the law for the equivalent to USD 20-25.
Having systematically shut them out of gainful employment they were ripe to be massaged for anything.
It was political bloodsport and they were its game.
Things had gotten marginally better when the Coalition took office, so now, as they recall the past –
and the triumphant fist pumping of the guy who chauffeured the defecting MP to Ogle Airport, the same guy who has eaten at every political trough in Guyana and even has in the vaults of Lackey-ism, an email titled ‘Corbin is the Glue ’ back when he was massaging politicians in that red light district…
…and the heaving, grinning, mockery of the oversized PPP Afro Guyanese MP, famous only for wearing his collar backwards to assert religion, as the defecting MP was in the act of deserting –
they realize, with rage, the entitlement this PPP feels and the core of its Leader that ought to come with a bottle of detergent.
Now they’re wondering if “all dis voting ting even mekkin any sense”.
And as they relayed their grouses, their hurt and disappointment, I pledged, as they insisted, that I would “talk about it because nobody don’t listen” but stipulated that I would only carry the gist of their statements and will not mention the names of their accusees.
Caps fit, I said.
Agreed?
Agreed.
Good.
First off where are the jobs that they promise? Why we paying all this VAT and we not making more money? Yes the water coming a lil mo frequent now but black out still bad. University fees? Duh is a man by itself and when you done, no wuk ain’t even deh. Look, me two children going to primary school and every time they dey in deh, I prayin’ the roof don’t blow off .
Why only the children of Ministers or friends of the big ones in Government getting academic scholarships to China and Cuba? One Minister alone got two children pun scholarship in the States. And who payin for it – nah we, though we hear one of the children don’t even go to school fuh truth. Who checking into these things? ? And this thing about posting people overseas with servants and nannies wheh all this money coming from?
And why when government Ministers going overseas they flying in first class… and the average man in Guyana can’t afford to pay for a passport? One Minister and she whole entourage fly in first class de other day, fuh why?
You din see when the No Confidence Motion come down how many of them went fuh listen…fuh support??? And they fly first class too, back and forth.
That’s how they roll. Is like the SUV’s. They used to talk about the other side and now look at them… every Minister got a SUV with black, black tint.
Is six ah one and half dozen of the other…
Look. I remember when this new Government come in and they say they going start to give national awards again. You see how it going , all the Party people and Government people friends getting awards? One of them did campaigning one time fuh stop doing business with the money transfer people and end up getting a medal fuh wuh… Party wuk.
And now this ting come down hey, the No Confidence ting and now everybody know we …’cause they want we vote.
When everybody did giving they self raise, riding in they SUV and living large, they didn’t know we . Now they want be we best friend, doing they walk about.
We disgusted man, we fed up. Wuh is de point. Wuh we voting fuh… we ain’t getting nuttn.
Politics in Guyana, for the past five decades, has been a relay race between the two major Parties to exchange the entitlement they usurp upon victory and assign to their extended employees. With nonchalant pomposity they feign diligence, uphold division, dismiss, as ambient noise, calls to keep their promises, honing a portfolio career in which wrecking the country becomes a natural byproduct of their politicking.
And not one election cycle, not one new Administration, has changed the way people feel because no Government has ever refused the mantle of ruling like the electorate doesn’t matter.
Machiavelli’s The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.‘…has undergirded the actions of Governments from 1966 to now but the combination of the taste of Non PPP Governance for 4 years and the inveiglement that produced the 2018 No Confidence Motion has created, what could be, the right level of toxicity to BEGIN the removal of the Proportional Representation System that has kept the nation in continuous electoral chaos with its racialized mechanism…
…demonstrating, with devastating regularity, how the vote-for-race system crowns Presidents Kings, makes demi royalty of their appointees…and then the presidential kings strive for the Muammar Gaddafi incarnation …
…except he ended up in a gutter looking up at the wrath of his oppression that was literally under the feet of its victims who were stomping on his face…
These frustrated Guyanese are ready for gutter duty on Leaders who feel that Government is their domain … are salivating at the prospect of savaging those who created injustice against them, as a matter of course.
We should, also, not be misled by the apathetic Party turn out at the two Local Government Elections held since 2015, in which the Party with enthusiastic turn out claimed victory, I learned.
Questions now swirl around the lack of voter education, cultish voter indoctrination and the deft application of sound bite politics to reboot the fifty year old operating system of the same bamboozle politics, race baiting, social division and self-serving, small thinking, bullshit.
And this is not profanity. It’s a genuine attempt to paraphrase the tone of the angered without losing too much of its flavor.
Real people, real lives, raw sentiment.
It’s easy to win when you alone show up for the race.
That was the crown of this exchange.
Sharing the range of sentiments expressed above with some whom I consider elders…“that’s not true…that’s Opposition propaganda” was the reflexive response…
…underscoring the sentiment that the Government, every last one of them, irrespective of Party, remains an ideological group of self-servants, proudly detached from the people and their concerns, firing off responses from the hand book.
One must fit.
Being impervious to empathy for the people you are employed by is a disqualifier.
People are staying engaged, in spite of the carnivalesque productions labelled political campaigns.
And the one message they are sending to politicians is political apathy is not the same as stupidity.
Waiting for that messianic candidate has proven to be a bust for many who sought to realize their fantasies through that leadership.
But this time the return to political slumber will not be the usual swift retreat, the anticipated reversion to docility, so that those who feel that Government is their inheritance can continue from where they left off.
How you mean if we want Door to Door Registration? Dat gotta happen. The list right now old…since 2008. That’s why Jagdeo fighting up against it. Nuff people name ain’t deh on dey.
I want say….Jagdeo but I know you ain’t goin write duh.
I won’t, Sir but I’ll file it under ‘F’.
The institutionalization of Guyana’s political competition has savaged the quality of the democracy itself. Politics has become a monopoly and wholesales all of its ills encapsulated in abuse of power.
Mitigating the socio political costs that have taken a toll on Guyanese has one option, now, for many voters- and that’s more political parties to chip away at the monopolies that have failed to, substantially, enhance and sustain quality standard of living.
The traditional Parties are no longer the imperial powers.
It would be good if they stop treating the electorate like recalcitrant subjects who just need a firm finger-wagging to get back in line.
