‘ONCE bitten, twice shy’ used to be a friendly warning of the futility of repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. But not anymore. One could apply this to the misnamed ‘A Partnership for National Unity’ that’s forever been more partisan than supportive of any aspect of national unity, from their rejection of the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD) in the 1980s, through to every other internal or external effort to plant seeds of unity.
They balkanized Guyana into partisan-controlled regions, villages and communities based on skin complexion and hair texture. Yet they, who broke with the PPP 59 years ago to permanently divide the country and its people along racial and partisan lines, are today bold enough to laughingly go to international forums such as the United Nations and claim this PPP/Civic administration is exercising ‘Apartheid’ against Afro-Guyanese.
Interestingly, just as the APNU and its allies are making their spurious and disgusting allegations, more and more of their longest-standing and strongest-backing members, in growing numbers, are deserting to join and support the PPP/Civic ahead of this month’s Local Government Elections (LGEs).
It naturally pains APNU and its chewing-gum partners to see the flow away from its ranks into the PPP/Civic’s wide embrace, so they continue to grab at straws to avoid drowning, in the process making all sorts of useless false claims and allegations to try to justify or explain the bleeding red haemorrhage.
As such, they have tried to use the highest court in the land – and not once, but twice – to again try to stop or slow down the speed towards the date for their next national electoral embarrassment, filing badly-prepared cases with unsupported allegations that, not once but twice, drew the sternest comments from the country’s highest judicial official, the Chief Justice.
Apparently forgetting the days when they depended on judicial and legal gymnastics to survive are long over and that Guyana is today part of the Caribbean regional judicial system that upholds international principles of law and justice in Guyana, APNU’s leaders are even willing to not only waste their time, but also that of the Chief Justice — and the courts — by engaging in the sort of vexatious litigation twice attempted in less than 24 hours.
The vexatious litigants have also forgotten that it was the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) that forced them to vacate government’s premises after hijacking the government for five months, from March to August, 2020, after having lost the elections and shamelessly accused the opposition of stealing its well-deserved victory, as agreed by all overseas observer groups, bar none.
But then, that’s what stubborn people do when they refuse to learn from history, proceeding to make the same mistakes time and again, repeating the same wrong or bad strokes and expecting to score boundaries.
Fortunately, however, Guyanese electors and those wishing to be elected on June 12 have been at one mind in ensuring the continuity of progress they’ve seen halfway through the PPP/Civic’s current term at national and central government levels, is replicated at municipal levels.
Guyanese voters have been bitten more than once and they’re now therefore understandably more than twice shy.
The losers will continue to fish for excuses and fiddle while their house burns. Meanwhile, the nation has decided to march-on, with measurable progress than mark time or in reverse, to a not-too-distant past that none wishes to return to, or to place their future in the hands of the usual suspects in these new Guyana times, when APNU and its partners have been more than twice shamed.
Shame on them.
