Aubrey Norton on protests

May 19, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Opposition Leader, Mr. Aubrey Norton hit the nail right in the middle of the head in his recent statement on public protests.  There were a couple of things left out, likely for purposes of civility.  There was one thing that just had to be included but wasn’t, possibly strategy.

The PPP government has more money than its leaders know what to do with: either in spending or with themselves.  They have more than they can burn or toss overboard; and I don’t think that is going too far.  PPP chiefs can dole out, or withhold, as they please.  They have.  There are sugar workers on the right side of oil and budget, and government enthusiastic generosity. Then there are teachers and public servants forced to walk on a path of fiery coals.  Barefooted.  The Beatles sang “Money can’t buy me love”, but it can buy a whole lot of faces for rank PPP purposes, and it can remind those favored with a $40,000 how the game is played.  In Guyana, a bright and big segment of the private sector could be accurately considered an extension of Freedom House, of having the same mind of a character straight out of Machiavelli by the name of Bharat Jagdeo.  A public servant is ousted by the PPP for being an open PNC supporter, or not being energetic [responsive] enough to the PPP’s side of politics and governance, and there is no spot in the private sector for them.  In the expanding and prospering private sector, an ousted PNC public servant is as welcomed as a naked, wild-eyed street bum with a pickaxe in his or her hand.  Mr. Norton has all that right.  Money is magical and makes all manner of things possible.  In a soundbite, the PPP has it by the truckload in $5,000 bills, while the PNC has but a few dimes.

Regarding protests, the Opposition Leader also has that one right.  People come out and the result is ‘dat de geh’ kick out.  It is the way of the PPP machinery.  Marxism-Leninism may be out (at least on paper), but Jagdeo was smart enough not to say anything about the fate of the Stalinism that the PPP practices, and of which he has many known affiliations. For the unknowing in Guyana, a quick tutorial is offered free of charge.  In my terse homemade definition, Stalinism can be summarised as follows: stand in line, speak the same line, and toe the line.  Or else…  Those with questions can call the Office of the President and ask for Bharrat Jagdeo [the title and the man are one and the same], who is the best person to share all the related components.  Be assured that all this is presented in the context of street protests, which is addressed now.  Street protests, that old Guyana cold war that got hot on occasion has run its course because many things can happen, and they are all bad for the PNC.  The Guyana Police Force is waiting and due to “accentuated politicization” it is capable of anything, including rejecting applications for marches and assemblies; coming up with the innovative and resourceful (trumped up charges) to deal with anti-PPP government protestors; and generally sucking the vibrancy out of them.  For starters, there were two things that Mr. Norton left out, perhaps out of decency.  It is that protests can be (have been) infiltrated by paid PPP goons (their skin colour should not surprise) to beat up a few Indians, and harass storeowners and travelers, if not worse.  And, regardless of how much either the PNC or Mr. Norton were to vehemently object that the goons are not of his group, nobody is listening, nobody cares, and whoever does, neither heard nor believed a word that he said.  To ram this point home, the irony is that PPP sponsored goons and terrorists are transformed into agents and property of the PNC, and there is no separating of the two sets.  Remember that skin colour is everything in Guyana.  Guyanese do well to let what Norton said and what I asserted earlier penetrate deeply: money is plenty, money buys many, money facilitates many a felony.  For further information, the interested can check with Aubrey Norton first, then the Guyana Police Force. Now if both are tightlipped, there is the astute Attorney General Anil Nandlall, S.C., who is always good for words of enlightenment.  How I love this town!

In preparing to leave, I would be doing the Leader of the Opposition a disfavour if I refrained from pointing out where he sold himself short, and his supporters hanging by what he left out.  To some degree, it could be said with certainty, it is not only his supporters.  Since Mr. Norton has come to admit that the high intensity, heavy voltage, protests of old must be declared dead in the incubator, then what is being substituted in that place?  He did say that “the form of protest has to change…”  I am with him there.  But it would have been helpful, without letting the cat out of the bag, if Guyanese were given a sense of what and how he was thinking.  Perhaps, small dedicated and disciplined crews of silent protestors, standing in place, before sensitive places.  Perhaps, unmoving groups of protestors lying in front of high value locations.  Perhaps, the media smartly utilised for maximum value. In digressing, I suggest that more excitable and combustible social media party participants conduct themselves in more tempered language.  Perhaps sustained solidarity with vendors be considered in more than word.  The PNC may not have money, but it must have heart.  Cheddi Jagan did.  Martin Luther King Jr. did.  Jawaharlal and Jinnah did.  Look how well they all did.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• civility, Mr. Aubrey Norton, Opposition Leader, PPP, public

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