Are Berbicians still blind after than twenty-one years of proof?

Today, the PPP leaders will address Berbicians on the death anniversary of Cheddi Jagan, and more certain than night following day, more certain than one and one make two, more certain that when you cut your finger blood will flow, will be the cry from every speaker, without exception, that the PNC was a bad government doing bad things to the Guyanese people, and the heroic PPP led by Cheddi Jagan saved Guyana and has brought democracy to Berbicians, which all Guyanese now enjoy.
Most definitely all the speeches will be so designed as to play a psychological trick on the mind of Berbicians – to make it appear that the PNC went out of office not yesteryear, not many, many moons ago, but just yesterday. Berbicians are too young to remember the superstar rock group of the seventies named ‘Bread’ and their famous song “Just Like Yesterday,” with the line that says, “Just like yesterday you come upon my mind and take it away.”
That will be the intention of every speaker – to capture the mind of the Berbician and steal it away from its present moorings. Will it work? It is doubtful that stratagem has staying power. It is very doubtful it will work today at Port Mourant and any other time in the future. And the reason for that is that after twenty-one years of PPP power, Berbicians don’t know of the ‘bad wolf’ the PPP leaders call the Burnham Government, because they are too young.
And after twenty-one years all they see is a Government whose faults are so mountainous and oceanic that no amount of bad mouthing the “blaakman” will work. Indeed twenty-one years is a very long time. Twenty-one years ago, Berbicians didn’t know of Shyam Nokta. He would be towed on his father’s Russian-made motorcycle holding on for dear life. Today Shyam Nokta is a young upper middle class man with his own consultancy firm making lots of money with the Government. And that is because twenty-one years ago is a long time.
Twenty-one years ago, Berbicians never heard about Vishok Persaud. He was a small boy hanging on to his father’s kurta when Reepu Daman Persaud conducted his Hindu sermons around Guyana. Today, Vishok Persaud is one of the wealthiest young men in his age group in Guyana. And that is because like Shyam Nokta, he has grown up and because their party, the PPP, has been in power a long time, for more than twenty-one years.
One suspects that the sins of President Burnham’s Government will not be detailed for Berbicians because in the potpourri of descriptions, too many of the deplorable things that Burnham’s Government did will bear uncanny resemblances to what the party of Cheddi Jagan has been doing to Guyana since Papa Cheddi died. The risk is too great. How can you tell Berbicians about strong men in the PNC Government doing whatever they want in Guyana when there are more examples of PPP strongmen behaving like banana republic oligarchs?
Would that not be a risk, because Berbicians may say; “But isn’t Minister this and Minister that doing exactly the same thing right now?” Was it not in 2013, just last year, not 1995 soon after the PPP came to power, not in 2002, ten years after the PPP came to power, but twenty-one years after the PPP took control of the government, that a Minister walked into NCN and demanded that a calypso being played be taken off the airwaves. Doesn’t that sound like the PNC Minister?
Yes, Berbicians would be told in general terms about the awful things the PNC Government did, but no details will be offered. Instead, there will be sermons about the present nastiness of APNU and the AFC. And the wonderful achievements of the PPP in Government. A mountain of examples will be given of the betrayal of Guyana by APNU and the AFC, and as always, the PPP came to the rescue.
Nothing will be said about the sudden wealth (not money but real wealth) that Cheddi’s inheritors have accumulated, like the swimming pool owners. Poor Forbes Burnham! The PPP continues to give him a basket to fetch water. When he died, he and anyone close to him didn’t have a house with a swimming pool. Today, Papa Cheddi’s protÉgÉs have risen from rags to riches in a supersonic time frame never before seen in history. Imagine selling a house for one million American dollars after joining the government for less than five years. Surely Berbicians can’t be that blind. If they are, God help this country, and fast!