Can the PNC stop the volcanic lava created by volatile Volda?
Dec 01, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon KN
Where are the voices of the AFC, WPA, ACDA, and all those energetic voices that would have rushed to crucify any PPP minister for two egregious emanations that came from Volda Lawrence?
Looking at the African Guyanese members of her party, she told them out of the 30 City Council candidates for the recently concluded 2018 Local Government Elections (LGE), the PPP put up 28 people who looked like them, (meaning Africans) and two that looked like Jagdeo (meaning Indians).
What is the subliminal message? The PPP wanted votes from African Guyanese in Georgetown, so they put up people who were African Guyanese, and that is something the PNC must fight against. She went on to exclaim; “Comrades, they took three from us in Georgetown. They never got it. They got it in names.”
Volda Lawrence took an interesting cross-racial phenomenon and turned it into volcanic lava. From one end of the globe to the other, the world knows that the PPP is a racially conscious, racially driven, racially made up party. It is about 90 percent Indian. In the 2018 LGE, this racially based entity found 28 African Guyanese to contest the Georgetown City Council poll. Why is that a negative direction? On the contrary, it has positive implications for the future of cross-racial voting.
I voted in Turkeyen for a Black man who was an independent candidate. I admit at the time of writing I can’t even remember his full name (Hermanstein is all I currently recall, and was too lazy to Google it). My philosophy forced me to vote the way I did. I wanted to vote out the two racial Leviathans –PNC and PPP. I was not interested in the AFC’s ticket. I felt success of independent candidates would help to undermine racially deterministic voting.
If the PPP secured African candidates for the 2018 LGE in Georgetown, that cannot be a terrible scenario. Why? Because it would force the PNC to strategize like the PPP and look for Indian personalities. The PNC had started to do that in the 2018 LGE.
For example, it put an Indian woman in Le Destin (East Bank Essequibo – what we Georgetowners would refer to as West Coast) and she beat the PPP candidate. The identical thing happened in Kingston in Georgetown. An Indian pulled it off for the PNC.
If the PPP follows the convoluted thinking (and they will) of Volda, they will go to Le Destin and do a Volda Lawrence on the villagers. It will go like this. “The PNC put an Indian name in an Indian village to fool you, but we will take back the seat.”
The second emanation is as disastrous as the first one. Volda as a minister of all of Guyana; for all Guyanese, said her inclination is to provide employment for members of her party. She revealed that she is looking for a medical doctor and her preference is for one who is a supporter of her party. Volda’s volcanic lava is spreading and we will see if Granger and the PNC will take out some colossal hoses and water it away.
The question obvious to even a schoolboy is whether volatile Volda is thinking in the same way about the judiciary. If her preference is for PNC supporters to be given state employment, then would she use party sympathy in her recommendations to the relevant sections of her government about the appointment of judges?
We have been that way before with Jagdeo. President Jagdeo held up the appointment of Justice Bovell-Drakes because back in the 1970s, Bovell-Drakes was once the head of the youth arm of the PNC. Jagdeo’s thinking was clear. Drakes was once associated with another party other than mine, and I cannot approve of him being a High Court judge.
Will the PNC stop Volda’s lava from spreading? It doesn’t appear so. When the general-secretary of the PNC, Amna Ally, was approached for a comment on volatile Volda, Guyana’s old, regressive political culture showed its monstrous head.
Ally asked the reporter if he/she heard Lawrence say what she is being accused of uttering. The foolishness of this attitude is that Lawrence herself has not denied making the two statements when she was asked for a response. Lawrence may have done a terrible thing, but she has far more commonsense than her party’s general-secretary.
We are waiting to hear what two organizations will say about the volcanic lava of volatile Volda. The AFC and WPA say that they are multi-racial parties. If they cannot denounce this tribal crudity by Lawrence, then they are as guilty as she is.
and guh set up di tingy nuh! Or padna up wid Chiefy who done deh in da business ova heh!