There is confidence that Excellency Donald Ramotar would have found a way to keep the Guyana-Cuba medical link going. As it has been for 50 years. An ole warrior, ideologue, like Guyana’s former president, would have wrangled and tangled until he kept half of his Cuban medical pie, or all of it. Now that he speaks without the power of Guyana’s presidency behind him, he incurs the wrathful putdown of that great Trinidadian American lover, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. In following the enlightened one’s postures and words, my sense is of the return of slavery, and the joys of indentureship, with abject surrendering diving to new depths.
I cannot speak for former Jamaican PM PJ Patterson, or others in that disparaged circle. But, with or without Excellency Ramotar’s permission, I dare to say a word or two on his behalf. National independence is not simply an instrument signed, with separation from white masters. It is of freedom to think and act, the liberty that belongs to all men and women. PM Persad-Bissessar may see independence differently, given her present prostrations before Yankee power projections. But what can be said of Guyana’s own honorable-as-the-day-is-long Pres. Ali? To say it best, I submit this consideration for every citizen of this tragic Republic: Mash 2027 could see O beautiful Guyana replaced by America the beautiful. This is where the grand visions of national self-determination terminate. How about Police Mash photo?
America says no more medicos from Cuba, and Guyana says that exactly the thinking right here in the PPP Govt. I wonder what the PPP of Ali and Jagdeo and the other runners-up would do if America says that Guyana has too much of China here right now. Recall how special was the Guyana-Cuba friendship society at the national level. Now just checkout the Hon. Frank Anthony, given a stink and dutty job fuh duh: Cubans can come on deh own. But not via the auspices of the country-to-country arrangements that held so long, were hailed so long. National self-determination on how to manage its own affairs, or national humiliation in the press of American interests? Somebody, please tell me. When a senior minister is compelled to the role of junior floor cleaner, the cherished status of Independence and Republicanism perished in the flames of slavery. The difference is that instead of the King of England the King of Washington, DC., is the new Guyana master, as well as that of Trinidad and Tobago. Whereas Guyana’s Pres. Ali is cagey and slippery with the PPP Government’s nuanced bowing before the machinations and manipulations of the US, Trinidad’s Persad-Bissessar’s preferred mode of operation is to go full-bore, full-butt, and full-out. USA! USA! USA!
Poor Donald Ramotar, he learns in his advanced years, who is who, and the degree to which US dominance commands kowtowing by regional leaders before the American juggernaut. I know two, for a start. Excellency Ramotar has been around longer than me, and deep inside; he should know a few more who are at home (in the house) with slavery, and could give a damn about the quality of liberty. This business of power, and holding onto it, allows men and women to get prosperous overnight. It also makes them wet themselves in the daytime, when the white people apply pressure to them. A Big Man, like Donald Ramotar, takes a principled position, and a neighbor empties a nighttime snap can on his head. It is nothing personal, just the rat race between TT and Bee-Gee to get on the right side of the Yankee. Here is the most inspiring part: it is all in defense of national sovereignty, honesty in leadership, and precious liberty.
After 63 Independence anniversaries in Trinidad and Tobago, this is where PM Persad-Bissessar stands on the Cuba question. After almost 60 years of Independence in Guyana, the official message from PPP GT to Havana: no mas. After 68 years and the fall of the West Indies Federation, all eyes are directed at CARICOM. After Excellency Persad-Bissessar’s outburst against Guyana’s Ramotar and Jamaica’s Patterson, among others, the odds of CARICOM’s surviving, or it standing as a pillar of regional significance, look both clouded and somewhat anemic. Trinidad had oil and lost its marbles. Guyana has oil and its leaders have already lost their minds. There must be something in America’s medical formula that is gut stripping, backbone snapping.
