…on firings
Coalition politics is once again under the microscope with the fallout from the ouster of WPA Executive Member David Hinds as a columnist from the State-owned Chronic. But the fallout has highlighted some rather interesting revelations, which might just be radioactive!! One fella by the name of Milton Bruce revealed what might be at the root of the hammer falling on Hinds – to wit, hardliners within the PNC have neither forgotten nor forgiven the WPA for skewering Forbes Burnham, just when he was consolidating his dictatorship.
Burnham’s principal weakness was his vanity – and boy did Rodney exploit that weakness. First and foremost, he did that by his very presence. Burnham’s claim to fame – and source of his support in the African community – was his “brilliance”. But what Rodney showed was that in that department, it was a case of being “a one-eyed man in blind man’s country”!!
There’s no question that Burnham qualified as a lawyer – but is there any case that any of his followers could point to where he created any precedent through his argumentation? NONE!!
In fact, the Luckhoos outshone him to such an extent in this department, he created the position of “Chancellor of the Judiciary” – which is giving us such fits today – just to place someone over CJ Sir Joseph Luckhoo to humiliate him. Luckhoo, of course, left for Jamaica and our loss was their gain in legal acuity. Burnham was also lauded as an “orator” – but was nothing more than a cringing colonial hangover with his Churchillian pauses and lisping – totally bereft of the scholarship that typified Rodney’s speeches. He never saw the irony of imitating the racist, arch colonial Churchill!!
But there was also Rodney’s use of satire and ridicule that made Burnham a laughing stock to the PNC’s traditional Georgetown base. “Fat-boy” was the least of the barbs. Most famous was Rodney’s analysis of why Burnham had wrecked the economy, the society, and everything else in Guyana: he had the “reverse Midas Touch”. Everything Burnham touched was turned into sh*t!!! Come to think of it, Rodney was saying Burnham singlehandedly turned Guyana into a “sh*thole” country!!
Milton Bruce claimed the WPA destroyed “the most revolutionary thinker” in Guyana – Burnham!! So, selling out Guyana to the CIA and leading Guyana into a civil war from which we’ve never recovered is “revolutionary””?? Well then, every tin-pot dictator from Trujillo to Papa Doc was also “revolutionary”!!
No…as your Eyewitness said before, the WPA’s usefulness to the PNC is over. But he believes the WPA will remain in the APNU coalition after their humiliations – just as their co-leader Roopnaraine did.
They’re “true-believers”, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea!!
…on WPA’s coalition role
Another fallout from the firings was the revelation of some of the background intrigues that led to the APNU slate in 2011, which turned around the fortunes of the PNC – and not so incidentally, confirmed what your (humble) Eyewitness had surmised earlier. WPA Executive Tacuma Ogunseye expanded on the pivotal role they and their party played to sanitise the PNC – all for the sake of “members of the African Community (sic) whose interest were of paramount importance to me”.
And why not?? Ogunseye was also an Executive Member of ACDA, who in 2006 had called for the army to stand down if that community rose up were the PPP to win the elections of that year. But what troubled your Eyewitness was Ogunseye admitting he and Desmond Trotman connived to have Roopnaraine become the running mate for Granger in 2011, because “the PNCR was having extreme difficulty finding an Indian candidate to be Granger’s running mate.”
So what if no “Indian” was involved in making the choice of their “leader”!!
…on split of TUC
Bruce also claimed the TUC wasn’t split during Burnham’s time. So what happened in 1984 when George Daniels pulled out the GPSU from the TUC…and was threatened with death by Burnham’s goons?
Surely, Burnham wasn’t yet dead?
