Come on, babe, Can’t you see
I’m the Pied Piper, Trust in me
I’m the Pied Piper, Follow me
I’m the Pied Piper And I’ll show you where it’s at…

Lyrics of The Pied Piper by Crispian St. Peters

OK you may have missed the classic 1966 ballad by Crispian St. Peters – never mind, if you want to delve back in time and hear the smash hit of the day it’s on youtube and other sites.

The song is a take on the well known fable about a piper who rid the town of a rat infection with his magic flute.   However, when the townsfolk reneged on the promise to pay the piper, he devised a plan to abduct their offspring who trailed along behind as he played his flute.  He led them through the town and into the hills – never to be seen again.

The linkage to the story is that with significant numbers of young Guyanese becoming eligible to vote in their very first general election, a piper hopeful has appeared. (He has been spotted despite his attempt to dissociate himself from his actual identity with pseudonyms like JOPP and APNU).   He’s got neither the magic, nor the touch or the draw of the fabled character.  Nevertheless, his endeavour is to snare any young person he can with a spate of siren-call tweets.

The Piper’s FLUTE
In an ironic stroke of coincidence (or not) the Brigadier’s play for the youth vote is focused around exploiting the themes Flattery; Lawlessness; Unemployment; (get) Ten and Education – which comprises the acronym FLUTE.

This is the Brigadier’s FLUTE:

Flattery
Everyone knows that the future belongs to today’s young adults – few places more so than Guyana.  Even if we take it at face value that the candidate is genuinely corncerned about youth and not just the youth vote; you’d have to think he is laying it on a bit thick when he extols the mouthful that even Romeo’s entreaties to Juliet cannot surpass – e.g., when he says to them that they are the ones with:
“Imagination to Innovate, Initiate and Investigate; with the Interest to communicate, network share and exchange Ideas through the new media such as Facebook; with the Independence to explore, travel, lime and hang out  and with the Intuition, energy and passion to propel change and pursue their personal goals.”

Lawlessness & Crime
Young men and women are disproportionately victims of crimes.  No comfort is taken from the following 2008 report by the Economist at the height of the Lusignan murders, but it does put some perspective to the issue:
“Many of Guyana’s neighbours suffer even worse violence…   Jamaica is the world’s most murderous country, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela. But some smaller Caribbean islands are catching up fast, irrespective of size or wealth. Pretty little St Kitts, with just 40,000 inhabitants, suffered three murders in four days last November. The prosperous Bahamas are far more dangerous than impoverished Guyana. In Trinidad and Tobago, the murder rate has quadrupled over the past decade, despite a fall in unemployment from 18% in 1994 to 5% last year. The common factor behind this violence is the illegal drugs trade, which provides gangs with cash and weapons.”

The Brigadier’s attempts to score political points with this national problem are unworthy.

Unemployment
Criticism on this front from someone with no coherent economic platform and whose sole foray into the area would see the sugar industry eliminated, with the consequent loss of employment and  misery, does not rise to deserving a serious repone. This is a significant issue related to the changing nature of the global worklplace against which the government is creating and deploying key strategic initiatives.  The issue is dealt with more fully in the article recently published titled, Decide: Is Guyana Better or Worse Without Sugar.

Ten
What can you say here but that The Piper’s hand is revealed!   Do you mean that all this concern about youth has really been about “Getting Ten”, when the dust has settled?  (You’d almost have to start wondering if a similar agenda is underneath the Brigadier’s interest in the genuine plight of many women.)  In the event that this is unfamiliar to some readers, Mr. Granger is exhorting youth (not very successfully) to the “Get Ten Movement” aimed at recruiting other young people to vote for him in upcoming elections in a sort of pyramid operation where each recruit is supposed to get 10 other young people’s vote and each of those 10 gets 10 others themselves, and so on.

Education
Mr. Granger is out of touch with reality here.  A letter to the paper on Granger’s speech at the PNCR’s Independence Day event held at Square of the Revolution stated, “I didn’t think that a person of his stature would be so out of touch with the actual state of this country.”

We’ll just stay away from Mr. Granger’s laments on the education system.  It’s an opportunistic attempt to exploit the high value Guyanese place on having their children educated well.  Others have taken the Brigidier to task on this, including another excellent letter to the editor under the caption, A noticeable stranger to reality, which states in part:
“In the period of the reign of the former administration, this country’s education system was a national disgrace. The physical infrastructure was in total disrepair; almost all the schools were in a dilapidated state, posing grave danger to our children; furniture were in short supply with  political affiliation rather than needs, determining supply…
This general depression in the education sector was translated into disgraceful results at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations. Guyanese students performed the worst among all Caribbean students taking the examination [during that period].”

With this Piper’s hand revealed, people can see right through his FLUTE’s charade.  But be ye not complacent, The Pied Piper is sure to have more tricks up his sleeve, or somewhere else if he’s like that king in the other fable, who was exposed to be altogether as naked as he could be.

In all seriousness, the Brigadier is certainly not the best candidate the PNCR could have fielded.  Nor is his campaign the most credible; it is extremely limited and his play for the important youth and female vote smacks of insincerity.

In his thirst for votes, the Brigadier has become a champion of women’s issues.  He says that it’s high time that Guyana had a female Prime Minister (presumably serving under him) in recognition of women’s historical contribution and abilities.  His inference is that the number two spot somehow represents a magnanimous gesture and would be a record-setting breakthrough precedent for women in Guyana.

Evidently it escapes the Brigadier’s attention that Guyana occupies the vanguard in this regard having been led by a female Head of State.  The first female President in the country’s history was Janet Jagan.  And there are several women including women ministers in high profile positions.

A good example is the Minister of Amerindian Affairs, the Honourable Pauline Sukhai.  These are the Minister’s words from an interview with ‘The International Knowledge Network of Women in Politics’:
“I married at a very young age – 21 years – and had two children. But at the political level, I didn’t think there were many obstacles in my party since we’ve always pursued a more equitable representation of women in the party’s policies and decision-making – before as the opposition and even now as we are in the driver’s seat.  Our leaders and the rest of us at the top have always pushed to ensure that women were included in the party’s upper echelons and even in the government.  And the results are tangible because we have achieved more than 33 percent women in Parliament. At the cabinet level I think we are at about 34 percent.  Even the party list has to be one-third women, which was the quota that the former president, Dr. Cheddi Jagan [1992-1997] – who passed away – ensured be kept.”

These are facts and supporting action that Mr. Granger seems to have missed.  Whereas, when there was ample opportunity to nominate or advance a female candidate during his party’s Presidential candidate selection process – he didn’t.

Altogether, Brigadier Granger is very much out of sync with real life.  And his campaign strikes more of being an opportunistic play for youth and female votes cobbled together with a bit of uninformed rhetoric, than of solid ideas that would advance the nation.