IT ALL STARTED…
FEBRUARY 10, 2016 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, PEEPING TOM
It started with some of the colours of the national flag, except it was not the national flag, but rather, the flag of the then ruling PNC party, that was being flown over the Court of the Appeal.
This all seemed fairly innocuous at the time, but it turned out to be far from that. It turned out to be the case whereby the entire country came under the doctrine of the paramountcy of the party.
When you fly the party flag over the Court of Appeal you are in effect saying that the court is subservient to the party. When the highest court in the land is forced to fly the flag of the ruling party its means that the party trumps justice and human rights, and this is exactly what happened, and which led Guyana down the road to destruction.
It started with the simple colours and it ended with the Disciplined Services having to swear loyalty to the party, and their heads having to turn up at congresses of the ruling PNC.
It started out all fairly innocuously and ended with workers being forced to march in parades intended to demonstrate support for the government. It started out with a party flag and led to the party card being the chief means of obtaining jobs in the public sector.
It started out with the colours of the party and ended up with people being pressured to go and work on Hope Estate just so that they could obtain basic rations which were then in short supply.
Beware of those colours because the decline of the economy started with those colours flying over the Court of Appeal.
A Partnership for National Unity used the colour green during its 2011 campaign. The AFC used yellow. When they combined for the 2015 elections, the party paraphernalia were in the colours of yellow and green.
Today it is all yellow and green or green. The National Sports Hall has been painted in green, an ugly-looking green. A certain Ministry has bedecked its staff in the colours of green. The boats and buses donated by private businessmen to the government to transport children to school are all painted in yellow and green, the colours of the ruling coalition. These assets are now the property of the State and should not bear partisan colours.
Guyana is now in an election season. Local government elections are due within the next five weeks. The government when it was in opposition had complained about the opposition using the State and state assets to advance the fortunes of the ruling party.
The same argument can be made about what is happening today. To have public property bearing party colours is to be using the State for partisan purposes. It is unfair.
We can make light of the fact that the country is going through a process of yellowing and greening. We can try dumbly to ridicule those who have raised the issue. But let us remember how the decline in Guyana started, how paramountcy took root and destroyed this country. It all started with the colours of a party flag.