Counting down to Christmas
Frankly Speaking...
By A.A Fenty
Stabroek News
November 28, 2003
Tired as I am - and you should be - of our beleaguered society's more serious "issues of national significance", I play with the words the English have fashioned for me.
Like "counting" and the expression "counting down". Though some sort of Christmas is upon us, I really mean here, "counting" as in enumerating, reckoning up or finding the sum of. So allow me a few short paragraphs of this briefest of pieces to ask: Just what did Mr. Benjamin, the chief census-taker, say about the delay in revealing just how many of us we are? And what troubles comrade RHO Corbin with respect to the Elections Commission "counting" the number of eligible voters comprising our present electorate?
We really need "to know how many we are", as Margaret Lawrence put to us a few censuses ago. That's vital for a country's planners - in education, in health, those in commerce who need to know what markets are there; for everything national. That's why, I can appreciate, that this last census was actually a population and housing census intended to garner comprehensive statistics with respect to our quality of life - and all the elements which we have or do not have to make that quality of the desirable standard. That's why too, that survey was more than a mere count. Throughout all the regions, it sought to collect indicators - poverty, dependence or comfort, intruding even into the sources of people's various incomes and other forms of support.
Notwithstanding whatever the Bureau of Statistics head has explained, is that why the results of the enumeration are not yet available? Are they still compiling responses and making conclusions for Ministry of Finance planners? You see, frankly speaking, I feel that we are quite less than we were, at last count. Certain political parties might feel happy about that - if it is so. A smaller electorate, they might think or "reason" will actually work for them. Especially if "misguided" or ambitious politicians or groups split some vote. But I have this feeling that, proportionally, more supporters of some group have migrated or died more than some other one. But which? That's why also, we need to know the results of Mr. Benjamin's count.
Even without that, of course, we know that there are more of us living outside of Guyana's borders than within. Thousands in neighbouring Brazil, Suriname and Venezuela and in the Caribbean Islands. And hundreds of thousands in the USA, Canada and Europe. If just one quarter of them returned for Christmas where would we put them. O.K in their relatives over-crowded homes(?)
Now, even as I was beginning to gripe both about our inability to update a national Roll of Electors and to hold elections - especially local Government polls - the Elections Commission announced that something was actually happening with respect to the Roll of Electors. There was talk of continuous registration whereby - as in more orderly civilised countries - elections could be called at relatively short notice with an accurate, credible register of voters confident of their eligibility. Right on cue, Cde RHO Corbin, I'm told, has objected to the Commission's current Voters Database.
I suspect that, quite apart from GECOM's apparent state of stagnation and the bureaucracy surrounding the long-postponed local government polls, this call for a new or cleansed database might entail fresh registration countrywide. And all that that exercise implies! So here we go again. Whether the current roll is updated in a manner acceptable to the Opposition, or whether completely new registration must be mounted, expect more rancour. I know all concerned "parties" will demand that an accurate Voters List is essential for fair elections. I also know that such matters motivate migration!
So as we normal, harried, stressed-out citizens count down to Christmas and its twelve days, there is, building up a whole new lot of hullabaloo about two other counts - the results of the last comprehensive census and the compiling of a Voters List. Poor us...
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The Barons?
Only last Friday I continued my very miniature campaign, in this column, to illustrate the all-pervasive nature of the narco-trade, the vulnerability of our double-standards society with its changed moral values and the almost tacit acceptance of the trade's prominent operations and beneficiaries.
Now comes the news of major busts in the United States, with cocaine from, or passing through, Georgetown and Timehri. Around the world, especially the world of narco-trafficking, we now have to be recognised as a major trans-shipment local. Every week local and foreign couriers - the small fish - are caught at airports and elsewhere. Rice and Timber from Guyana conceal the lucrative, deadly drug. Yet the Big Barons are never identified. It's difficult, I expect to prosecute top men, when no fool-proof evidence is forth-coming. But now with the British and Americans involved, cannot our local police stand tall?
Stay tuned. As this saga will not go away. After all, certain politicians, economists, businessmen and very small men, all contend that our country's economy is virtually cocaine-based and buffeted!
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Until...
1) After the 1985 elections, a new Voters' List had a torturous birth between 1990 and 1992 - three years. Of course, today's 18-20 "voters" would hardly know about that - or care.
2) I repeat again: the images of murder, of victims maimed and dead - in print and on television - make the journalism out of New York and Baghdad look tame.
3) The Cultural Centre precincts killing was a chilling reminder of where we are now, as the guns emerge from every crook. Anything goes as life is cheapened to be less than proud lower animals. Don't think that it is not possible to be enacted in the centre itself. (Check the "security" there).
4) "Live and Let Live," Desmond Hoyte had proposed around 1993/94. I recalled that on seeing the camaraderie of Caucasian and African Zimbabwean cricketers as they celebrated on the cricket field. They seem to sit in different stands but are united temporarily against a "common opponent".
Like Mr Hoyte, as is also reflected in the Afro-Indo Kenyan Team, I can settle for peaceful co-existence, if not perfect love and harmony. Live and let others live.
`Til next week!