Frankly Speaking The 2020 Jubilee–and-oil Elections

With maximum respect to all, I lay claim at being among the first- if not actually the first to describe National Elections 2020 as the Jubilee–Oil Elections. I mean to point out that another gala Jubilee beckons in February 2020. The Republic will be 50 years old. I expect similar extravaganzas as last year May’s.

The government will ensure portions of the “Good and Green Life” during those Republic celebrations. Orientation through celebration will hopefully produce happy contented voters later in that year 2020. ExxonMobil will contribute significantly to national events as barrels of crude should begin flowing as is now projected. And his Excellency and the Prime Minister will lead the administration’s charge that every citizen’s “good life” is much closer although another five years (20202025?) will ensure completion of promises.

I suspect that between 2019 and 2020 advances from Exxon will be accessed to complete certain national economic projects, to pay very “living” wages and salaries; to sustain Regional developments and to foster the sustenance of the satisfied voter. But even as a modified, better-designed Demerara Harbour Bridge is presented to sweeten electoral courtship, the PPP and its surrogate opposition won’t be idle. Not at all…

In fact I predict that, mainly through its members and supporters with PPP DNA in their blood and visions of Cheddi in their souls, the PPP Opposition will win, handsomely, the 2018 Local Government Elections, notwithstanding the “deliverables” from GECOM Justice Patterson’s Guyana Elections Commission. The Opposition’s local triumph will be a sharp wake- up call for His Excellency’s PNC, AFC WPA, TUC and others in the so-called APNU “Partnership”. Now for my further personal predictions for the big one- the 2020 Jubilee-year general elections.

*********************** Not these elections! Never that oil!

I hope I’ll be proven very wrong about the implications and consequences of the 2020 elections. Observer and would-be Elections Commission Chairman Christopher Ram has just written something I also hope he is wrong about. Ram has stated: “The APNU+AFC Government has shown little interest in constitutional reform although to its credit it has established many of the constitutional bodies which during the previous Administration were on paper only. At the same time, the President who enjoys certain immunities under the Constitution has set himself up as the interpreter of the Constitution rather than the High Court. Given the sloth at which the Government makes decisions and the President’s attitude to the Constitution, it is unlikely that there will be any constitutional changes before the 2020 Elections.”

I do also hope Mr Ram is proven incorrect as I do that my 2020 prognostications are substantially inaccurate as well.

I predict that the ABC countries – America, Britain, Canada – will continually make the correct diplomatic statements but would prefer that the PPP not win those elections. I foretell now that, based on the 2018 local polls, the 2020 campaigns will be robust, heated, abrasive. Great valid faults will be found with GECOM’s management of the polls – before, during and after, led by the then 86/87-year old Chairman Patterson. (Please pray that I’m completely wrong here but I keep feeling that the goodly chairman will fall unwell. Even though he appears much fitter and healthier than I am right now.)

I sense that as the PNC throws everything into ensuring that Doctor Jagdeo’s PPP never gets its hands on the oil (barrels) by 2021, there will be mighty unrest. I suspect that His Excellency, the Brigadier-President will quietly utilize his Commander-in Chief authority to influence his kith-and-kin coercive forces to quell protest and outrage on streets and villages. A close election will again see Granger’s PNC entering the Corridors of Power as government.

Now you political analysts can “analyse” and project all you want. Prove Fenty wrong! By 2020! (Coward as I’ll be I suspect I’ll ask one daughter to let me spend election week with her in New York, USA.)

Distasteful as this issue can be, I feel constrained to repeat things I wrote herein on September 13, 2013.

Captioned “Mr Granger’s youth lament” that column recorded my own opinion on the likelihood of David Granger becoming president after defining a few of his varied attributes. But the thrust of that September 2013 piece was Granger’s concern then about what he described as “Education apartheid” – his take on the seeming inequalities in the education system and the plight of the majority poor.

The occasion was a Sunday evening Camptown Anniversary observance spearheaded by pioneering community activist Rudy “Boysie” Bishop. The retired Brigadier/Opposition Leader was the Guest Speaker who – knowing, I suspect, that the Campbellville/Kitty locale housed thousands of at-risk young – was willing to share his views on and hopes for the nation’s youth.

His was a save-the-youth presentation that September evening. His APNU Election Manifesto of 2011 had outlined their Youth Empowerment Scheme (YES) but Granger then, had reported a truth: “You get the medical care, justice and education you can afford.”

However that Sunday September 13, 2013 Granger address had a shocker for me. His Excellency detailed an incident at a secondary school executed by eager and willing male and female students. It was a Sunday evening but His Excellency was virtually explicit then. I was/am relatively hardened and thick-skinned but was taken aback. Even as a few others in the celebratory Camptown gathering confirmed Mr Granger’s intelligence on the high school goings-on, I suspected that he even repeated his info for my benefit.

Now why do I recall that revelation? It’s to indicate that the now President has a good idea of sexual transgressions in schools – schools headed and manned mainly by female teachers. What is to be done? And how does His Excellency react to the recent high-profile Bishops’ High’s allegations?

Discuss… Imagine, ponder…

The USA is currently awash with revelations of sexual harassment and assaults by prominent men in its media, entertainment and politics.

Most of the alleged incidents occurred, allegedly, in the past. Politics, power and morality are all at play here. I ask: whether President Bill Clinton or any other icon, does the immoral diminish the ability and contribution?

Wouldn’t the green paint colour the ire of the antiAPNU majority? Alienation benefits the Opposition, right?

Pity my old PNC could not have arranged a more appropriate date for last Saturday’s anniversary dinner. The Comrade-Leader couldn’t be there. And many came from afar to dine with David.

Our athletes and young boxers are doing us proud. Our cricketers hardly have to beg. But right now our boxers are reduced to begging to go represent us in Saint Lucia next week. Who’s to blame? ’Til next week! (allanafenty@yahoo.com)