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FM
Former Member

Condemn Priya Manickchand

 

July 9, 2014 | By | Filed Under Letters
 

Dear Editor, The recent outburst by acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Priya Manickchand, on the outgoing US ambassador at the 238th independence anniversary celebration of the United States is vulgarity to the highest and totally unacceptable. I believe her action should be condemned by every right-thinking Guyanese in no uncertain terms. Remarks at those occasions are in keeping with diplomatic norms. Those occasions are not to be used for personal attacks or “cuss down”. Any responsible Minister would have adhered to those principles. Unfortunately, it does not seem as though the Minister knows better. If the Minister had issues with the US ambassador the Minister should have been intelligent enough to know that that was not the place to vent her feelings. While I was very disappointed by the Minister’s behaviour, I was not surprised. I can recall at a workshop earlier this year where she launched a similar attack on me. As soon as I attempted to raise a matter with the Minister of Local Government she started heckling. “Chairman, why you went into the dorms?” As she continued heckling I gave the microphone to her to hear what was bothering her. She then said that a team from the AFC paid a visit to the Mahdia school dorms and that is wrong. She even said that a councillor place a couple of students to pose with some firewood on the shoulder. This was out of order, she said, and contended that it could become a subject of news reports in the media. Here again the Minister didn’t seem to get it. A workshop is not a forum to address those issues. I believe that the time has come for some of these PPP Ministers to undergo some training in public ethics so that they will stop embarrassing the Guyanese people. I am calling on  President Donald Ramotar to issue an open apology to the US ambassador for the minister’s behaviour.

MarkCrawford          Regional Chairman          Region Eight

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I am calling on  President Donald Ramotar to issue an open apology to the US ambassador for the minister’s behaviour.

MarkCrawford         Regional Chairman         Region Eight

 

He is too dunce to understand what you are telling him.

FM

The Feral Blaster ( A Calypso/Soca)

July 10, 2014 at 12:35pm

(Hard Guava season rhythm)

 

…..Watch nah, watch nah

Aye, everybody talking ‘bout how I is a boss

Some call me a gutter rat, but lemme tell them, I not in dat!

Ah feel like gih dem two hard slap!

If yuh want to know and who have ears to hear

(Chorus)

I is a Feral blaster

When dem yankee hear that Priya is there

Dem have to cower in fear

Feral blasts sounding clear

Dem kaka-holes can boo for all I care

 

Armed by Dr. Luncheon, I am a new wave truncheon

Sharing licks lef’ and rite

Who cross Red Line deh in mih sight

I kicking dem out tonite

‘Cause I is a feral blaster, no one does it faster

All dem ambassador ‘fraid tonight

The feral blaster is looking for a fight

Ah have the doctor truncheon in mih han’

Ah wavin’ it at all in the lan’

(Chorus)

 

Em ,em, yes you, the one that dare to boo

No house lot for you

Tek dat for a feral blast!

An’ for dem that heckle , alyuh tek me for Dr. Jekyll

I mo like mister Hyde

Is a feral blast for yo backside

I am the most fearsome creature in the land

Dat you must understand

Feral blasts have been compared to farts

Not for social consumption some might say

Screw dat!  the smell is here to stay

(Chorus)

As for local elections

Lem me remind you… is the feral cat giving directions

If yuh ent gon vote for me , den yuh don’t get to vote fo nobody

I ent wearin no blue cap

Leh Clinton Urling try wit dat

If Prak tell me to haul mih ass

I will hit he with a feral blast

(Chorus)

It must be plain for all to see

I ent fraid nobody

Yuh can keep yuh visa Mr.USA

I eatin’ with chinee chopstick now-a-days

An a flyin’ dynamic airways

 (Chorus)

 

Mars
Originally Posted by asj:

I am calling on  President Donald Ramotar to issue an open apology to the US ambassador for the minister’s behaviour.

MarkCrawford         Regional Chairman         Region Eight

 

He is too dunce to understand what you are telling him.

You don't have the authority to request the president to apologize to anyone. The editorial that calls for Dr. Manickchand condemnation is just another unnecessary waste of time. It's better to teach the opposition how to win an election rather than telling the PPP how to live their lives. 

FM

Manickchand’s salvo was a result of the policy of abuse Freedom House has for those who speak out against its interests

Dear Editor,

I’ve been observing with no great surprise the aftermath of the embarrassing Manickchand attack on now former US Ambassador Brent Hardt. I met Ambassa-dor Hardt a few times and I found him to be professional, pleasant and cordial. After winning the Guyana Prize last year, at the ceremony I presented him with gratis copies of my books and before the week was out I received a telephone call asking for my address, subsequent to which I was delivered via an embassy driver a handwritten note of appreciation and a medal from his office. I read an article once at the website of The Politic, the Yale Undergraduate Journal of Politics, featuring the Mr Hardt as a Yale Alumnus, a decorated career diplomat versed in five languages who had hitherto attracted no controversy in his postings.

For someone of that sort of pedigree, I do not envy the man’s tenure in Guyana. Not only has it been marked by the PPP’s vicious attacks on him, but at one point they extended – via the pro-PPP cowardly online slander network – to a member of his family. The salvo fired against him by the government’s Minister of Education, acting in the capacity of Foreign Affairs Minister was therefore not a spontaneous reactionary event but a result of the policy of abuse that Freedom House has in place for those saying anything contrary to its vested interests.

Of course, as has been exposed by multiple commentators, the rationale given in the speech about being wary of US historical interventionism in Guyana is completely hollow. The PPP would have us believe that the same Cold War-context interventions of the 1950s and ’60s, which somehow did not matter in 1992 when the PPP courted the intervention of the USAID-funded Carter Center, somehow suddenly matter in 2014 when they are the ones in power. And, if there were ever an act of symbolic of reconciliation of the PPP and the United States it was that Cheddi Jagan died not in Guyana or Russia or China or Cuba but in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington DC, ie, in a US government military facility in the American capital, the seat of its political power; and he was flown there by the US Army.   Moreover, the PPP cannot seriously consider itself the guardian of Guyana’s patrimony when secret and parasitic deals are being made with Chinese state companies while the untested Ambassador Dr David Dabydeen sits down in Beijing spending his time. The same PPP that speaks about the ‘impropriety’ of the Ambassador’s reminding the President of the constitutional obligation featured the now disgraced former governor of the Brazilian state of Roraima, Jose de Anchieta Junior, sharing the campaign platform with Donald Ramotar and Bharrat Jagdeo, and endorsing the PPP.

Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, but with even that façade ripped apart, always shameless in her pronouncements, the dinosaur that is Gail Teixeira has now resorted to the supposedly safe and self-righteous havens of gender and ethnic politicking.

Suddenly, Priya Manickchand isn’t simply an ignorant embarrassment to Guyanese everywhere (and I personally have been asked by respected colleagues from across the region what on earth was going in with our government) but she is a marginalized Indian woman exposed to racism and sexism, while acting in defence of her country. This from a governing party that is known for its racism, as exposed most recently by the Freddie Kissoon libel trial that the plaintiff himself, Mr Jagdeo, is now running from because of the political capital the evidence being presented has cost the party; and this from a party one of whose functionaries recently resigned in the midst of allegations linked to predatory behaviour. I have said it before and I will repeat it here. The PPP has been shown its mortality as a political hegemony, both in electoral as well as systemic terms. And it is afraid. The glitz is gone and what we are exposed to is its rampant incompetence and corruption, but it continues to defend this incompetence and corruption with an increasingly ferocious impunity – it has become, to coopt Dr Luncheon’s own adjective, feral.

This is no longer about economic policy or political ideology or patriotism. This is about holding on as long as possible to power.

In the wake of Minister Manickchand’s comments, I’ve seen a great many people express surprise at the depths to which the PPP is willing to go to defend itself. Most of these people however have been silent in the wake of the incrementally increasing indecency that has led us to this place, and I can say with all confidence that, as Freedom House continues to crumble, such utterances will increase exponentially, particularly since it has run out of all plausible excuses for its refusal to hold local government elections. It is up to us, the citizens of Guyana to roundly condemn the shamelessness, whether by booing them in person or censuring them on social media commentary or in letters to the editor. A basic intellectual and moral non-cooperation with the idiocy and incompetence coming from the seats of corrupt government is a powerful tool and it is one we need to use more frequently.

 Yours faithfully,

Ruel Albert Johnson

FM

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