There is a saying that people get what they ask for. Many can distinctly remember when there was a big push to have Donald Trump re-elected as President of the United States. It mattered not that he had become a convicted felon, that he keeps failing to appreciate the rule of law.
Many forgot January 6, 2021 when a mob stormed the Capitol to force the cancellation of the election that brought President Joe Biden to office. Many ignored the threats Trump had made before his re-election. Instead, some opted to choose race over logic. There were the others who simply voted against a woman.
So it became difficult for a Black woman to win the elections although she was the best choice. Even the People’s Progressive Party in Guyana silently but certainly supported Trump for the presidency. The party felt beholden to him because he toppled the David Granger administration.
Granger did not have the courage of his conviction so he asked for a vote recount when nowhere in the law was a recount necessary. Admittedly, the recount exposed the shenanigans of the PPP when it came to elections rigging.
All that is now history. The reality is that Trump is in place and those who supported him, whether they were legal residents of the United States or not, are now crying and hiding. The man has begun a programme of mass deportation.
And in keeping with his promise he is sacking all those who opposed him. His actions are similar to the actions of the PPP and a far cry from the actions of David Granger. There were mass firings in Guyana by the PPP. Those who even showed the merest inclination to support the political opposition were placed on the breadline.
David Granger, on the other hand, openly stated that he was not in pursuit of vengeance because everyone had a right to support a party of that person’s choice. There were no mass firings.
Some may remember a press conference hosted by Clement Rohee when he served as General Secretary of the PPP. He said then, that many people were fired. I asked him to name two and he couldn’t. This was far removed from 1992 when the late Desmond Hoyte actually published a weekly list of those fired by the PPP in a column entitled, Lean, Clean and Mean.
Trump is making no bones about deporting illegals. He is even seeking to strip citizenship from some of the people who have been in the United States for years.
As can be expected, Guyanese have been caught up in the deportation net. These were Dr. Cheddi Jagan’s people who voted with their feet and those who responded to the pull factor when the mass migration continued during the tenure of the PPP.
Admittedly, these were people seeking a better life in the land of plenty. They worked hard, sent money back to their struggling relatives in Guyana and some even climbed the social ladder.
There have been videos of streets in Queens, New York, being devoid of people. But people have to work because relatives would not keep them indefinitely. Some of these have been picked up. They are being sent back much to the delight of people like Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo.
There was a large banner on the seawalls proclaiming Trump’s elections victory.
Most of those being deported are of East Indian ancestry so Vice President Jagdeo is already seeing votes. He hopes that significant numbers of Guyanese are deported. It matters not that families will be destroyed.
Many of those deportees are dyed-in-the-wool racists so the expectation is that they will vote perpetually for a government headed by their own kind.
Meanwhile, there will be a decline in the numbers applying for US visas. There will also be fewer people flying to this, the land of oil, because they fear an inability to return to the United States. In recent times they had been coming at the drop of a hat so that the number of arrivals soared.
I am not a betting person but I am certain the decline in arrivals will be stark.
Back home the budget debates have been revealing. There have been comments about the government’s inability to complete projects. And these projects are numerous.
There was also a boast about the increasing number of vehicles on the roads. Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn spoke of the large numbers during the PPP years and the decline during the tenure of the coalition.
For starters, the late Dr Cheddi Jagan had waived the age limit on vehicles to be imported. This taxed the foreign currency market because the older the vehicle, the more spare parts were required. It is the same this time around.
There were also the massive efforts to defraud the Guyana Revenue Authority. People hid the true capacity of their vehicles.
Because of the lack of age restrictions on vehicles anyone can see the number of vehicles that end up parked for good because people simply cannot maintain them.
In the field of health, it transpired that although so much more money is being spent, malnutrition is on the increase, more babies are dying and drugs continue to be in short supply. The nursing population has declined drastically and is continuing to decline but more hospitals and clinics are being built.
It is the same with education. More money is being spent but the quality of education is declining. The fail rate is increasing.
And the much vaunted gas to shore project? The man who holds responsibility for this project has decided that he will no longer answer questions about the project that is going nowhere. He had done the same with the new Skeldon Sugar factory.
