Friday Musings…
THE Bible talks about young men seeing visions and old men dreaming dreams.
Georgetown Mayor Hamilton Green, no longer a young man by any stretch of the imagination, insists he is not dreaming and that he has visions. And to prove the vision point, he has recruited a rookie politician who claims he has vision credentials.
President Bharrat Jagdeo, asked at a press conference last week about the latest garbage crisis engulfing the city, could not hide his exasperation at the antics of what he called a “visionless” City Council.
There are not many people who live and/or work in the city who are not exasperated at a council that has succeeded in weaving nothing much but an inglorious legacy.
An exasperated businessman last week asked in pure bewilderment, “How much longer do we have to tolerate these people?”
The best educated guess is that they will be comfortably ensconced in City Hall until some time in 2012. Lord, have mercy on us all!
Mr. Green, who likes to quote from the scriptures and who probably climbed the Great Wall of China when he was there the other day to get a clearer view of things, did not like this dismissal of his leadership qualities and lack of vision.
So, at a press conference earlier this week, he denied that his band lacks vision and, for good measure, he took along the leader of a little-known political group called `Vision Guyana’ to back his point. (You can’t call a man who has a `Vision Guyana’ leader in his corner visionless, can you?)
Mr. Green became Mayor of Georgetown in 1994 as the head of a group called Good and Green Guyana (GGG) and with nothing remarkable to point to from his stewardship of City Hall since then, he now seeks support from `Vision Guyana’.
How’s that for proving his vision credentials?
The ‘Vision Guyana’ man used to be linked to Green’s People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), then jumped to the Alliance For Change (AFC), and is now back with ‘Vision Guyana’. He seems to be trying to find his bearings in the political waters of Guyana, and Green is looking to him to anchor City Hall’s vision for the citizens of Georgetown.
That’s what seasoned politicians will call astute leadership – a city mayor saddled with his latest garbage crisis and he solicits support from a ‘Vision Guyana’ leader desperate for any opportunity to establish some kind of political credentials.
Some observers said they thought the `Vision Guyana’ man was there to announce he was taking over City Hall to demonstrate his management expertise to lay the groundwork for being nominated as the opposition partnership presidential candidate for next year’s general elections.
But Mayor Green is too old a political dog to allow any slick poodle to steal the limelight at his show, and he ensured that the `Vision Guyana’ man was there purely for decoration.
A group of men were last week pondering the fate of the city at a watering hole, and the central point of the gaffing was what next Green has up his sleeve.
A wag proclaimed that Mayor Green is preparing a grand comeback with the GGG and he should not be ruled out politically.
“But the GGG dead, dead…How can it come back?” shouted another in the group.
The wag explained that he had it from good, good, good sources that Mr. Green is preparing to announce that when he broke from the PNC and formed his GGG in 1994, its real name was Green Green Grass, and that it was he who should be credited with conceptualising the Low- Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).
After all, said the wag, the green grass taking over Georgetown today is testimony to Mr. Green’s `green’ vision for the city back in 1994 and the greening of the Guyana economy.
The gaff was getting warmer when a light shower came and the pavement outside the bar where they were sitting was flooded and they had to leave.
(Editor’s note: The language used in the rest of the conversation as reported by Mr. Khan cannot be printed.)