Friday Musings
WE GUYANESE may not be among the most prosperous people in the world but that doesn’t mean we will take any gross eye pass from anybody – even if they have been knighted by Her Majesty the Queen in England.

Just in case there are some among us who do not know what eye pass is (and that can be termed eye pass!), it is an extreme form of insult.

If a born and bred Guyanese encounters eye pass, watch out for the repercussions. Cross our path and you may even encounter a fine cut-ass, much less a busing out.

A Jamaican faced with eye pass would say, “Yu tek yu rass clath and pass me!”

When I was studying once in Barbados, I was invited by some Bajan friends to a get together at a house and was freely using the Bajan term `Cor blim me’ in conversation thinking it was acceptable in decent circles.

To my surprise, the host was horrified that I was using the term in his house and I soon found out that it was a curse term. In other words, I unintentionally was indulging in eye pass in the man’s home by breaching the rules of good behaviour.

Poor me, I had picked up the term from among the ordinary folk I was mixing with during my studies on the island. That’s just me – I like mixing with people on the ground to get a real feel of what life’s like in places.

I bond easily wherever I go and made some good Bajan friends while there. And when we were hanging out, `Cor blim me’ was among the new terms I picked up.

I am still in touch with some of my Bajan friends from time to time and cannot recall any eye pass from them.

But Guyanese are now being subject to some real rass clath eye pass from some Bajans and it’s a pity because Bajans are generally really nice people.

Our people have been faced with the indignities heaped on them by the new immigration crackdown ordered by the Barbados Government and now one of their sons knighted by the Queen of England has heaped added eye pass on us.

He goes by the title of Sir Roy Trotman and his recent eye pass to Guyanese did not go unnoticed.

Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee slammed into him for what he called this “gross eye pass” to the Guyanese nation.

Sir Roy was here for the recent conference of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association but either felt compelled to stick his nose into local affairs or was led down the garden path by people he thought were his good friends.

Sir Roy is also apparently a spokesperson of some sort for the International Labour Organisation and was coerced into going on a fishing expedition on behalf of trade unionists Lincoln Lewis and Norris Witter and former treason accused Mark Benschop who have been charged by the police for breaching the law.

According to Mr. Rohee, Sir Roy claimed that the three “picketers were seeking to have the Government commit to its obligations and permit collective bargaining, social dialogue and freedom of association among others”.

He noted that the three men had been on street protests six times from June 26, including outside the Office of the President, the Chinese Embassy, the formal opening session of the recent CARICOM summit here and the Brickdam police station. They were protesting about issues far removed from those listed by Sir Roy.

The minister said they were charged when they allegedly breached the peace and good order on July 15 and he put the Bajan knight in his place.

Sir Roy must have fancied himself a knight in shining armour riding to the rescue of his pals who had found themselves on the wrong side of the law.

But he was more like a Don Quixote battling windmills he thought were evil giants abroad in the land he was visiting. And in his delusional battle, he did not even bother to acquaint himself with the point at issue, and worse, proceeded to abuse the hospitality of the state and people hosting him here for the CPA conference.

As Dr. Roger Luncheon, Head of the Presidential Secretariat said yesterday, the government, in the context of treaty obligations and other conventions, accredit and offer State hospitality to officials from national, regional and international bodies.

He noted too that there is a corresponding expectation that in discharging their responsibility they would do so in a way that would conform to expectations – modest behaviour, non-interference and so on.

He said the public statements by Sir Roy were deemed by the minister to be inconsistent with such norms and actually offensive.

Dr. Luncheon said it was also brought to his attention that Sir Roy was not recently the only one who seemed to have a problem with this convention and it appears “that those to whom we offer the recognition and diplomatic immunity and all the concession that go with their status as functionaries of international agencies to whom the conventions apply, they give their mouth a lot of liberty in Guyana.”

“…when you add it up together you could understand the vehemence with which the minister responded to this eye pass”, he told reporters.

Rohee said: “What is even more outrageous about the utterances of the ILO representative is that he never sought to find out from the Government what its views are in respect to the issues nor the history of the three individuals who it is well known have a long track record of engaging in anti-government and politically disruptive behaviour.”

Talk about eye pass. That is rass clath eye pass and it’s time we put a stop to it.