Historian histrionics
President Ramotar, whether he intended to or not, has certainly thrown the opposition into a tizzy with his frank ruminations on how the APNU/AFC combine rigged the last elections. The official opposition’s reactions we have already discussed. Granger school-boyishly screamed it wasn’t him and pointed fingers at the PPP. He also asked for more details after the president had given place (South Georgetown), time (towards the close of polls) and methodology (‘atmosphere not to have any PPP agents around’). The president also fingered some GECOM staff.
What is Granger looking for? The smoking pencil? As for Ramjattan, the best he could come up with was to threaten he might not show up at the next inter parliamentary talks! Is he for real? This is the only opportunity he gets to sit among the big boys. Like he did before, look for him to show up so early, the guards at OP wouldn’t even have opened the gates yet.
But the greatest storm and fury have come from the non-parliamentary opposition – they’ve certainly gotten their drawers into a knot. The Stabber News is beside itself. The Sunday editor (a frustrated, non-published historian) dashed off one of her patented virulent full page editorials, questioning the president’s proffered reasons for not objecting  during the elections. To wit, possible violence breaking out. She would have none of it! The PPP, “obsessed with power would never “sacrifice an overall majority to avoid violence”.
Ah such pontifications! Such certitude! Such a historical nonsense! Our so distant, wannabe historian has certainly forgotten the history of PNC violence in 1998 that made the PPP agree to a truncation of two years from their term-of-office. And a raft of constitutional changes to favour the opposition.
But what was most revealing was the refusal of the Stabber’s Sunday editor to challenge the president’s charge that the APNU/AFC had conducted a ‘racial campaign’ in Linden. Could it be that they want to retain a fig leaf of credibility over their naked partisanship?

Copycat
But the Stabber’s staff wasn’t finished. Their daily editor, Cheryl Springer, decided to weigh in a day later. Bucking for the Sunday editorship when the incumbent returns home, Springer? You were ok on the venom and nasty insinuations but you have to work on your prolixity – you have to keep up the lies and bitterness for a full page.
Springer, after quite a convoluted reasoning process – which lost us after the first few non-sequiturs and hasty generalisations and other logical fallacies – surmised that the president had in effect indicted GECOM which should be overhauled pronto. Talk about straining at a mountain to produce a gnat! Take a bow Springer. GECOM is indicted and should be cleansed so as to have a neutral and impartial election-day crew.
But didn’t your party (APNU or AFC – take your pick, it doesn’t matter, they’re one anyway) also express some reservations about other aspects of GECOM’s staffing? Make sure you’re on the same page, ok? You might even become Sunday Editor.

Riot Act man
Tacuma Ogunseye and Aubrey Norton were on an Internet radio interview. We thought Ogunseye would be giving an update on his threat to precipitate riots in the streets if shared governance wasn’t the outcome of the last elections. You remember? The PNC/APNU shouldn’t contest the elections – the PPP/C would win it massively anyway. It was “Give me shared governance or give me death!!” The disciplined forces would have stood on the sidelines since the protesters would be ‘kith and kin”. Remember?
Well Ogunseye didn’t seem to remember – and his host, who had broken the original “riot story”, didn’t remind him. What politeness! What hypocrisy! But Ogunseye and Norton jumped on the president:  it wasn’t the APNU/PNC/AFC that rigged – it was the PPP/C.
So we have one question for Ognseye: “If the PPP/C was going to win by such a massive majority, why rig?”

Snubbed for sure
Khemraj Ramjattan, we have pointed out before, is a man fighting for relevance in the fast changing landscape of Guyana. But like the Dodo that could not adapt to the new environment, he is headed for extinction. Like most passé creatures, however, he refuses to accept he is a “has-been”. For politicians, this means that you are ignored by the movers and shakers.
Ramjattan is whingeing and moaning that he was snubbed by the president of the IDB who recently visited Guyana. Poor deluded nonentity! The IDB is the largest single funder of Guyana’s developmental thrust: right now it has some $250 billion invested in our country. It is about to make the decision that will make or break the Amaila Falls Hydro-Electric Project – the largest project ever contemplated for Guyana. So, you would think the president of the IDB would have a chat with those that it deems to be the “players” here, right?
You bet your bottom dollar! This tells you that the international players have concluded that Ramjattan is yesterday’s news – stale. Trotman has manoeuvred himself to be in the running for the leadership of PNC/APNU where his support has remigrated; Nagamootoo, who brought in the Berbice votes, has been snubbed and derided by Granger and APNU: the AFC is done with and done for!
Speculating aloud why the IDB chief didn’t acknowledge his existence, Ramjattan threatened to ask our foreign minister why he was not “allowed” to meet the man! Listen, little man, don’t descend into paranoia: you just don’t matter.  Ramjattan may try to impress sugar workers by showing up in “shirt and tie” on the order line, but just as they are turned off by his bitterness against the PPP, the international financial institutions (IFIs) have signalled he is already off the radar. To be successful in politics, you must stand for something, not just be against something. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Ignorance and bluster
Another “has-been” who’s flailing away trying to get some traction and recognition is Lincoln Lewis, head of that ‘paper’ entity – the TUC. Ironically, Lewis had first received recognition decades ago for exposing the TUC for the fraud it was – manufactured into a creature of the PNC. The irrelevance of Lewis can be gauged from the fact that as the head of ‘the largest trade union umbrella in Guyana’, the best he can muster at his picketing exercises are his buddies in bitterness – Kissoon and Benschop. Pathetic.
Lewis’ style is best characterised by “ignorance and bluster” – both of which were on display in the last few days. First came the bluster. He praised the opposition for nitpicking and denying the government’s request for supplementary spending on acknowledged projects like the preparation for the Speciality Hospital. OK – nothing new there – he’s with the opposition and this relationship trumps any concern for the well-being of his trade union members. Bitter man.
And, inevitably then came the ignorance: “The Parliament of this country has the responsibility of developing and approving programmes based on the vision of the citizens, and the executive has the responsibility to carry out these programmes.”  Really?! Go re-read your first form social study text book Lewis; it’s the executive that formulates the programme for developing the country. Read that S-L-O-W-L-Y now!

Hick bitterness
Addressing President Ramotar, the opposition’s triumphalism was demonstrated by another bitter man: AFC country lawyer Charandass Persaud: “You are the government of the day, but the opposition parties (combined) run things. You, Sir, are like a toothless bull-dog. A more appropriate description of your position is (in hunting terms) a ‘sitting duck’.”
It is good of the hick lawyer (another one that went to law school in his dotage) to remind Berbicians that the AFC has now combined with APNU to bring down the PPP.
He who laughs last laughs best.

Roadrunner Politics
Faith Harding seemed to have hit a raw nerve when she accused David Granger – who his wide-eyed acolytes Harripaul and Archer swear walks on water – of being ‘a stranger to truth’! She was referring, of course, to the stunts Granger and his godfather ROH Corbin pulled during the stage-managed selection election for the PNC’s presidential candidate. Harding was merely questioning the process: to say it was ‘outcome-determinative’ would be like saying the ocean has water.
From what Harding revealed, the process would not have been unfamiliar to Wile E Coyote in his pursuit of the Roadrunner. A surfeit of absurdly contrived stratagems: dynamite, cliffs, falling rocks, exploding shotguns etc. With Granger/Corbin’s stymieing of Harding and the other contenders, we had – drawing a Granger raffle and handing out Granger paraphernalia on selection day;  not assigning her any responsibilities,  PNC PR personnel and vehicles only for Granger; big ones calling supporters to support Granger; Corbin and company supporting a Granger book launch during the contest. Whew!
That Harding survived all those ambushes was probably due to the same luck that blessed the Roadrunner. We wish her well. As she pointed out, the PNC has played a devastating role in sidelining women from their top leadership stratus. Quite ironic for a party that has literally been kept afloat by its indefatigable brigade of women activists.
Granger’s aloofness and callousness was exemplified by his response to Harding’s charges:  “Her departure will not damage the party.” Shame on you, Dagger!

Loose cannon
Tony Viera, sidelined even by APNU for being a loose cannon, in another one that is stranger to truth. More than anyone in Guyana, he waged a viciously racist campaign for more than a decade that the PPP government was pampering “Indian” sugar workers. His screamed that the PPP was increasing sugar workers’ wages to levels  that would cripple the industry.
Now speaking from the other side of his mouth he speculates that the government kept the EC grant from the industry so that “they could say that they did not have money to pay their workers a better wage”!

Monkeying around
The Muckraker-in-Chief is not just a stranger to truth. He’s been out of contact with truth for so long he would not recognise it if it jumped up and bit him on his behind. Referring to the opposition refusing approval of funds paid for overtime to registry workers or to prepare the plot for the Speciality Hospital, he claimed: “It was revealed that moneys were improperly spent.” We challenge him to reveal when and where this was ‘revealed” even as we ask him if he e-mailed his article from Monkey Mountain. After all, it’s more than 28 days since Gouveia challenged him to put up or shut up on lies he wrote about the Duke Lodge acquisition.

Suspending truth
And on the topic of that same acquisition, Goveia had authorised his bookkeeper Christopher “Suspenders” Ram to open his books (Goveria’s) to the Muckraker-in-chief. Now Ram is not just a stranger to the truth; he a declared enemy of the truth. Thus, while Ram couldn’t find time to say whether he was approached by Kissoon (with whom he’s in quite intimate contact – birds of a feather?) for the details, he’s in the Stabber burnishing his reputation for falsification.
He’s complaining that COP Greene was hired past the 55 year retirement age for COPs. But isn’t this the same man who’s been clamouring for Kissoon to be re-hired past the retirement age of 60? Green can’t function past 55 but Kissoon can past 60? He claims Greene’s contract extension is illegal because Jagdeo/Luncheon doesn’t have the authority to do that. (He’s wrong on that count.) But it’s OK for the UG Vice Chancellor to extend Kissoon’s contract even though he doesn’t have the authority? Such is the topsy-turvy world of strangers to the truth!

Scavengers

During the last political campaign, ex-President Jagdeo referred to some hacks in the media as ‘vultures’.  He obviously had been spared the sight of Ramjattan and Nagamootoo picking up scraps in the sugar belt. Lucky guy! One has to wonder at the depths to which these political has-beens will sink to salvage their political careers.

We all know that sugar is in some dire straits. The workers know this; the management know this; the government knows this. And Ramjattan and Nagamootoo certainly know this. Nagamootoo even conceded there are not going to be any ‘quick fixes”. So what does Ramjattan and Nagamootoo do the moment they hear some workers are protesting cost-cutting measures by management?

They swooped down like carrion-crows to pick on the carcass of the workers’ grievances. “The workers and the union are in bed with each other!” they screamed.  Hello? This is a government that made the largest investment in the history of Guyana to none other but the sugar industry – pre-colonial or post colonial, or whatever. This is the government that has consistently been accused by the PNC and then APNU of paying too much money to sugar workers.

And guess who’s in bed with APNU now – while commiserating with sugar workers for not earning enough? That’s right: those political prostitutes Ramjattan and Nagamootoo, hoping to get a piece of the (political) action. Still proving to Granger they’re not “PPP”? And these are the men that want to run Guyana? In bad times you don’t set Guyanese against Guyanese; workers against management. You talk responsibly to both sides so that the interests of all are represented. This is how Guyana will develop.

The unkindest cut of them all was to take that media vulture Freddie Kissoon to “resolve” the sugar workers’ grievances. The same Kissoon that cursed out sugar workers so viciously over the years and compared their ‘exorbitant’ salaries to bauxite workers’ “pittances”! A media vulture in the company of political vultures: we’re talking about some serious bottom-feeding here.

We call upon sugar workers not to be fooled by these political vultures. We know that you are facing problems. But do not trust these scavengers that will pick at your flesh to serve their own interests.

Spurious comparison

The Muckrake-in-Chief is trying to sound ‘scholarly’. He’s still at the Muckraker KN even though he regularly bites the hand that feeds him. Has to be some nasty hands! He’s probably hoping he’ll find a way back into UG.  He still hasn’t accepted that not a single member of the UG Council supported him – not even his ‘friends’.

Anyhow he described Hoyte as a ‘transformational’ leader and “Ramotar’ as a ‘transactional’ leader. What a dolt! But it shows how Kissoon throws around words that he’s picked up from some magazine without understanding how they should be applied. Hoyte had to be ‘transformational” because the PNC he inherited was dominated by Burnhamites, whom he had to get rid of pronto to continue in office. Green, Viola, Mc David, Granger etc… Necessity was the mother of his invention!

Ramotar, on the other hand, inherited a party that carried out its transformation seamlessly under a collective leadership structure that still holds to this day. The transactional maximum-leader syndrome that Hoyte represented – and Kissoon tried to foist on Jagdeo and now Ramotar was effectively debunked by the effortless and institutionalised transfer of power from the former to the latter.

But that now that Kissoon’s looking for a job –canecutting might just be his metier. With only two papers in 26 years, his head appears hard enough.

Cops as robbers?

In the last couple of months there has been a disturbing trend in the surge of robberies – now seem to be focused on goldsmiths. But even more disturbing has been the reaction of some police: they’re thieving from the thieves. What’s going on here?

Killing development

The APNU/AFC opposition have blown their cover once again. Maybe one too many times. After all their sanctimonious rhetoric about wanting to ‘work with the government for the good of the country’, they proved that all they’re interested in is embarrassing the President. They certainly could care less if they brought down the economy in the process.
The previous two flexing of their parliamentary-majority muscle, while cynical and crass, might be seen as their unexpected electoral performance going to their heads. The rush of adrenaline made them want to get back at the PPP against which they had nursed so many grievances. Like putrid sores, they had to burst sometimes. So they trampled over every convention and rule in the book (and then some) to grab the Speakership and its deputy.
But their actions on the Supplementary Expenditures Papers brought before parliament on Thursday for approval exposed the level to which they will sink. All to further their nefarious plans to gratify their political ambitions of securing executive power through the back door. What are Supplementary Expenditures? Simply spending over that authorised in the last budget and ‘brought at the earliest opportunity’ for approval. It happens in every family and every country: there will be unforeseen situations that must be addressed for the development of the country to continue.
So the opposition nixed spending for the personnel that worked overtime so that the extended registration to capture unregistered persons could proceed before the elections! The government was not supposed to leave no stone unturned to ensure that every Guyanese exercised his/her right to vote? That’s what the opposition thinks – yet they scream about extending ‘democracy’!
But it is their denial of the funding on the preparation for the speciality hospital that takes the cake. Eye doctor George Norton – to be distinguished from Aubrey Norton who was denied a seat in parliament for the more pliable Keith Scott – had the temerity to question the ‘planning’ competence of the government. This from a member of APNU – a party that still cannot add the numbers from 1900 Statement of Polls more than two months after they received them!
Norton can perchance help remove the mote from APNU/AFC’s eyes.

Loyalty histrionics
In the meantime, Nagamootoo grasped at the opportunity to prove to Granger that he was “not PPP”. He jumped up like the spayed fowlcock he imitates and also questioned the spending on the speciality hospital. The self-designated heir to Dr Jagan (he alone heard Jagan’s promise – he didn’t say whether there were any burning bushes nearby) in his portentous manner questioned why the government hadn’t “re-allocated” the original sum for the hospital infrastructural work by a “supplementary appropriation Act”.
The Minister of Finance Ashni Singh, put him in his place (as a lowly junior backbencher in the most junior of parties in parliament) by calmly informing him: “One does not reallocate specific expenditures.” We can see why he was consistently rejected by his peers at the Ex-Co level for substantive positions. He could only play to the crowd at Congress with his bombast, bluff and bluster.

Invidious suspicions
But even considering the compulsions of the opposition to throw wrenches into the government’s plans to make them look bad in the eyes of the electorate – not to mention trying to show they’re ‘doing something’ – the attacks on the preparations for the speciality hospital bears a closer scrutiny.
On one hand the opposition has consistently lambasted the government for not completing its projects on time. The Amaila Falls Road is a case in point. Why now the condemnation for proceeding with alacrity on a facility that can save lives. For instance, Moses Nagamootoo should have realised that if we had such a hospital when Dr Jagan had his heart attack, he could have been saved.
Is it because it is being built and will be staffed by Indians? Ask Mayor Green.

Guilty conscience
The reaction of the opposition to the president’s assertion that the PPP/C was robbed of its majority through their ‘manipulations’ was predictable: “Wasn’t us! We weren’t there!” You did it! The APNU’s outrage would have been funny if their shenanigans weren’t so tragic. They want an apology! The PNC, which rigged elections for 28 years, during which all its present crop of leaders earned doctorates in the subject – is miffed at being accused of rigging?
Call them the APNU or whatever, it is an insult to the wisdom of the Guyanese people if in any election that the PNC participates in – whether for dog catcher or the presidency – they didn’t  check for rigging. It’s in the genes by now. We now have another reason why the granddaddy of them all in the realm of rigging – ROH Corbin – took a back seat. It might have been a back seat on the hustings, but looks like he had a front seat elsewhere. South Georgetown?
And we can begin to appreciate Aubrey Norton’s fury at not being rewarded for his ‘work’ in Linden. Ah! What is it they say about no honour among thieves?
But the most predictable reaction was from Ramjattan and Nagamootoo. They jumped up and down like spayed fowlcocks: threatening much but in no position to deliver. Ramjattan threatened to pull out of the inter parliamentary talks if the president didn’t apologise! Gasp! So he’s going to cut his nose to spoil his face? The president did a favour to the opposition by inviting them into discussions on subjects that are totally within his prerogative.
Whatever faint hope that the president might have harboured that his magnanimous gesture would be reciprocated in Parliament has been twice shattered. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. So Ramjattan expected the president to be fooled thrice? The opposition just doesn’t get it. The president tried to go the way of “consensus and consultation” (his words) but the opposition kicked him in the face. C’mon Ramjattan, let’s see you walk out from the inter parliamentary talks.

Passion
Nagamootoo had been quiet since Ramjattan betrayed him and knuckled under to Granger, who not only delivered the Speakership to Trotman, but declared that Nagamootoo was ‘unfit’. He showed up with Ramjattan to denounce the president’s charge on rigging. His bitter and intemperate language against the president and the PPP/C showed that he’s decided to prove to Granger that he is not a ‘closet PPP’. Oh Moses! Is it worth it? Have you no pride?
Nagamootoo boasted that he came to the press conference “with passion”. Meaning – he vex. The president, he claimed, could have been doing other things – like dealing with crime and the floods – rather than bringing up the rigging by the opposition. Moses’ statement proves conclusively why no one in the PPP/C believed his pleadings that Dr Jagan had promised him the leader’s job. Let’s make it clear to Nagamootoo: a president can’t afford to only focus on one or two things on his agenda – he has to be able to handle them all. And that’s why you’re a junior to Ramjattan and Ramotar is president.

No place for women
We mentioned the departure of Dr Faith Harding from the PNC ExCo. But Faith is also not going quietly (much less gently) into the night. She is railing mightily. She revealed that in the internal elections for the PNC’s presidential candidacy (which the APNU and the other PNC acolytes boast as being the epitome of democracy), Corbin backed Granger and the entire machinery of the party was thrown behind Granger.
Imagine what these people will do with state resources during the elections if they ever get into power again. Hypocrisy knows no bounds! Faith, who has no more faith in the PNC, said Granger and its other leaders “left Guyana without women leaders”.

Pathetic AFC

After we pointed out that Granger of APNU spoke for the AFC about their parliamentary shenanigans, the AFC felt compelled to issue a statement. But all they could do was echo their master’s voice. It is downright pathetic. They criticised the president for “pessimism” on the possibility of ‘gridlock’ even though he had actually said he was “convinced we have the capacity to rise to this challenge”. Is this how the AFC plans to earn trust? By “lying” on the man?
Without any sign of irony (the lust for power blinds people to these nuances) the AFC asserted that the 5:4 ratio in the opposition’s favour on the Committee of Selection “reduces” the possibility of gridlock. Of course it does: as Granger pointed before there will be no gridlock once the PPP does what the opposition wants! By their own definition, we now have a 50.8 per cent ‘elected dictatorship’ in Parliament.
Referring to the president’s speech, the AFC admitted they were “very nervous and concerned about the future”. And very well they should be. With the old PNC’s vote returning home to the APNU and the PPP about to address their supporters’ concerns, the AFC is dead meat in any future elections. They are neither fish nor fowl: they are dodos.
But most troubling was the AFC’s call for the president to ‘create’ more jobs for Guyanese. And this is a party that calls itself “liberal”? Listen, you dodos. Liberal governments are not expected to “create” jobs: they create the conditions for the private sector to create jobs! That’s what a “liberal” economic position is all about.
The woeful Ramjattan and company should listen to the president’s speech again. S-L-O-W-L-Y and C-A-R-E-F-U-L-L-Y! The president outlined how those conditions have already been created – low inflation and other macroeconomic fundamentals; securing a cheap, green and reliable electricity supply; infrastructure to facilitate Brazilian southern connection, mining regime (oil, gold and bauxite); re-orienting the education sector etc…
If Ramjattan and the other members of the opposition would only quit their shenanigans that create political instability, maybe businesses would now invest and create jobs.

Sinking rat

Amid signs that ships are deserting the sinking rat, the PNC announced that it will hold a conclave (they call it General Council Meeting) to decide on its ‘relationship’ with the APNU and the performance at the last elections. What’s going on? Weren’t we told that the PNC was a member of the APNU? And the APNU did very well, thank you. What’s to discuss?
Ah! In politics, there’s always the issue of leadership to discuss. Politics is about power and power has to be in the hands of persons. Ambitious persons. And this is where ROH Corbin comes into the picture. Weeks ago, we already predicted that Corbin cannot be too comfortable with the ascendancy of his stalking horse Granger but more worryingly, the positioning of Trotman to mount another challenge for the PNC’s top spot.
The departure of two top women – Harding and Blair – is only the tip of an iceberg of resentment that Corbin has generated inside the PNC in his manoeuvres to retain power. (Ramjattan should study Corbin.)  The Norton sidelining is a big chunk of that iceberg. We predict that there will be much more bloodletting. ROH Corbin is not going ‘gentle’ into any night – good or otherwise. He is going to rage.

Ugly flip-flop

Tony Vieira has come out to support Kissoon’s rehiring at UG. The same Kissoon he once described on TV: “I want to tell you about a complete fool known to the public as Pfreddie (sic) Kissoon… this jackass…  Pfreddie has tied tongue and that he is as ugly as hell did not really come into the equation, but it should have. Indian people are, by and large, beautiful people… but when an Indian decide he ugly then he ugly for so, and Pfreddie is a prime example.”

Wilful ignorance

One cannot blame ordinary people for being ignorant of some matters in the public domain – who can keep up with the information explosion? But what do you say about the ignorance of some gatekeepers of public trust? Wilful ignorance? Take the sensational headline in the Muckraking KN about Tender Board contract to the NEW GPC via information taken from the Auditor General (AG) Office.
The Muckraker, we know, will stop at nothing to sell a few more newspapers and take a jibe at those more successful in business. Ressentiment and all that. But to actually alter the facts in a news report? Where did the AG Report even say that the payment was exorbitant? Even if the contract was awarded via sole sourcing (which it was not!) does the wilfully ignorant Muckraker believe that sole sourcing automatically leads to inflated costs? Or that there are no benefits to the purchaser?
Let’s educate the numbskulls over at the Muckraker: every government and most corporations engage in sole sourcing. The benefits can range from being able to negotiate very toughly because of the size of the contract to the assurance of availability of critical supplies – like pharmaceuticals. But all of this is moot in the case of the NEW GPC.
The Auditor General provided fuel for the bottom-feeders’ angst by falsely labelling the contract as “sole sourcing”. Not surprisingly, the Muckraker KN and the Stabber News snapped this up with alacrity. Never mind that the matter was clarified several times since the end of 2010.
Does the AG office know the difference between “sole sourcing” and “single sourcing”? Do they know that even in 2010 there were other bidders for the pharmaceuticals? Do they know that there is a prequalification process that includes domestic and international suppliers – such as IDA, PAHO, WHO, UNICEF, MedPHARM (Guyana). Do they realise that even if the NEW GPC becomes the single supplier, the government, through this process, is totally aware of prevalent prices and can (and does) bargain for the best overall prices?

Cooperation?
According to a report in our edition of yesterday, ex-Brigadier David Granger, leader of the APNU, assured all and sundry that the APNU and the AFC were not seeking to “control” Parliament. Yes, he did speak explicitly, once again, for the AFC. Well, he certainly fooled us! Seems that even military graduates learnt ‘doublespeak”: control of the Speakership and Committee of Selection is not ‘control”. Ah well! What do we know?
The actions of the AFC and the APNU were “in line with their parties’ policies”. Really? So what about all those promises by the good general and his party about “sharing power” even with the PPP, if they won the elections? Or is it that they would share if they won, but hog everything if they just won Parliament? Wow! I guess that must have been in the small print in the manifestos or was said sotto voce from the platform.
Granger assured the PPP that they shouldn’t be “concerned” about Parliament – they’d received a mandate for their actions. Their one-seat majority is a “mandate” while the PPP’s six-seat majority in the 2006 Parliament was an ‘elected dictatorship’! Go figure.
But all is not lost. Granger said he supports President Ramotar’s call for “compromise and consensus”.  “If government advances measures, policies and plans that are in line with our visions for the country and our policies, we would have no problem giving them our parliamentary support.” Meaning if the president does what the APNU and the AFC want, he is assured of their support! What support! What generosity! What magnanimity!

Fair-weather friends
Even though his friends at UG (“Lecturers gone wild”) seemed to have forgotten him in their anxiety to have their salaries increased, we still have the Muckraker-in-Chief, Kissoon, in mind. So once again, with the 28-day deadline from Gerry Gouveia nigh upon him, we ask: Are his bags packed for Monkey Mountain?

Politics as war
They say that we hear what we want to hear and we see what we want to see. And so we have the proverbs: “None so deaf as those who will not hear” and “None so blind as those who will not see”. In modern psychology, they have devised a test – the Rorschach Test – which brings this point out most graphically (pun intended). The subject is presented with random shapes produced by inkblots and asked what he/she “sees”. The results reveal the state of mind of the subject – especially his/her neuroses and phobias etc.
President Ramotar’s speech to Parliament last Friday was a Rorschach Test for the opposition politicians. Mark Archer, the ex-army officer who returned to Guyana to ensconce his former boss Granger into the presidency, wrote a long missive in the Muckraker KN – which definitely reflects his master’s voice. The president’s speech, he complained, did not fit the moment. He should have echoed Churchill’s: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Now this is very interesting thought from these military minds. Churchill uttered those words when Hitler was preparing to launch his onslaught on Britain during WWII and Churchill took over the helm of his beleaguered country. Is this how Granger and company see the present ‘dispensation’? With their majority in the National Assembly, they plan to overrun the executive with their Hiterlite Blitz? The engagements over the Speaker and the Committee of Selections were just preliminary skirmishes? We hope President Ramotar notes the results of the Rorschach Test.
Granger himself took pains to point out he was leader of the majority in the House of Assembly. Confirming that the AFC was now in an alliance or coalition with the APNU; Ramjattan did not reject this designation. Granger echoed Trotman (whom he had appointed as Speaker) and invited the president to visit Parliament more often. Right! For further ambushes? “Come into my parlour,” said the spider to the fly. We all know what happened to the fly.

The Great Betrayer
Ramjattan of the AFC continued his desperate quest for political relevance and survival. Exemplifying the folk wisdom that ‘all skin teeth na laugh’, he reminded the president of the ‘old days’ when they used to exchange political banter. He was obviously frantically covering up his guilt about the ‘older days’ when he sat with the president (then just the general secretary of the PPP) at the ExCo meetings, listened carefully and then ran over to the foreign embassies to ‘carry news’.
Ramjattan said that the president should have acknowledged “negativities”. What negativities? That Ramjattan had held on to his PPP seat even though he had betrayed the party by spilling his guts to his paymasters? That he had done so to collect his second duty-free car that he could sell and earn millions of dollars in profit That Ramjattan, unlike him (the president) refused to dedicate himself full-time to politics yet he wanted to become president?
Please, you betrayer; the president is a bigger man than you to dig up the ‘negatives’ of his political opponents.

The Stabber
The Stabber News also took time to take pot shots at the president’s speech. Why shouldn’t they: they’re part and parcel of the official opposition. They accused the government of focusing during its terms of office on “the retention of power”. Hellooo? So what has the APNU/AFC focused on during the short two months since it secured a majority in Parliament? Can you image what they would do if they were to secure the government? Remember that Ramjattan’s first statement after the elections was to call for his RDC councillors to receive increased compensation.
The Stabber also complained about the PPP/C’s “control”. Yes, and the APNU/AFC are really loosing up control of Parliament with their 50.2 per cent of the votes! The Rorschach Tests reveal big trouble from this opposition.

50 per cent = 100 per cent
President Ramotar is an optimist. In his warning that the new configuration in Parliament should not lead to a ‘gridlock’, he concluded, “I am convinced that we have the capacity to rise to this challenge”. While we agree with the president that the opposition has the “capacity” (after all humans have infinite capacity), the question is whether they have the will or even the inclination.
The evidence up to now shows conclusively that they do not. All they are interested in is getting their hands on executive power by ruthlessly exploiting their parliamentary majority – slight as the latter is. During the previous PPP/C administrations, the unremitting refrain from the opposition was that 53 per cent does not equal 100 per cent. This was the code for their complaint that the PPP/C was using their majority to hog ‘everything’.
But what has the de-facto coalition of the APNU/AFC done up to now with their 40.2 + 10.6 per cent combined into 50.8 per cent? Made it in into 100 per cent thank you! In the entire history of independent Guyana, even the rigger Burnham, who routinely gave himself more than two-thirds majorities, always allowed the “20 per cent minority party” in Parliament the deputy speakership.
But what has these mealy-mouthed hypocrites that can’t and carp of ‘democracy’ done? They out-Burnhamed Burnham and seized both the Speaker and deputy speaker. 100 per cent!!  Then came their chance to make amends after the president had stretched out the executive hand of friendship and cooperation: composition of the key Selections Committee.
And these lustres for power not only seized total control of this committee: they altered the rules of Parliament to facilitate their manoeuvre. The existing 10-member committee was reduced to nine and the 49 per cent PPP given four seats, the same and the 40 per cent APNU! 53 per cent cannot be equal to 100 per cent but 40 can equal 49 per cent. Go figure. As that loser Ramjattan said, “I do not know mathematics, but I know who wants to have control and we also know the concept of control freakism”.  Shameless freaks.
While President Ramotar warned that his government will not be held at “ransom”, the APNU/AFC most definitely has the gun of 50.2 per cent at his head. We remind him of the first rule in dealing with hostage situations: do not pay the ransom. It simply encourages the bandits to make further demands.

Lunatic fringe
The Muckraker-in-Chief returned to his obsession with former President Bharrat Jagdeo. Only with the latter now out of office, he swears that President Ramotar is identical to his predecessor. He can therefore regurgitate all his old brickbats – ‘fascist’, ‘elected dictatorship’, etc etc. Jagdeo, he claimed, was guilty of “erasing the demarcation between executive, legislature and judiciary under Jagdeo”.
Looks like the lunatic fringe is alive and well! In a parliamentary democracy when the executive has a majority in Parliament – take Britain for instance – where is the line between the executive and the legislature? And as for the judiciary, the Muckraker-in-Chief is certainly biting the hand that has served him well up to now. Is he saying the judiciary took “Jagdeo’s side” during the latter’s label case against him (Kissoon)?
But seriously, we really think that Kissoon is conflating the two presidents’ approach because he is just too lazy (two papers in 26 years!) to analyse current events.

Overreaching
Time and again we have had to resort to the folk caution of where all ‘smart flies” end up. It looks like the geniuses in the opposition let their lust for power overcome political common sense. Did the AFC weigh the political fallout of changing the rules of the game to seize control of the Selections Committee by acting as if it is joined at the hip in a coalition with the APNU?
Then again, the opposition-in-coalition will now bear the burden of making sure all those parliamentary committees, stacked with their lackeys, deliver the goods. The PPP/C should keep their feet to the fire.