CONGRATULATIONS to the chair of the Alliance For Change (AFC) on making a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It was not a simple task.  Long before it was on anyone else’s radar screen, he’d gone around for months, at every opportunity warning those who would listen that there would be unrest in Linden.  The only reprieve would be for the country to follow his prescription (after all, the AFC has the authority of seven seats).
As a matter of fact, by diligent repetition, he even convinced Lindeners of the prognostication.  And he caused the hometown party so much embarrassment and discomfiture that they had to line up with him, whether they were going to do so or not.
Fine work for one so new to the halls of power; but, as a friend used to say, ‘give Jack his jacket’, he spent years in the wilderness, and this is just deserts. Oh, how sweet the fruits of perseverance!
Let me say again: this was no mean task, no pun intended.
Give the man and the party he leads their due. Let this not go unrecognised; the results will surely not soon fade away.
As a famous playwright observed, “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
Now, the more cynical would question this visionary prophecy and say it was actually wishful thinking.  So, for clarity, we must state that a self-fulfilling prophecy is defined as — and this is taken directly from Wikipedia – ‘a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behaviour’.
Afterwards the prophet can cite the actual course of events that were followed as proof that he was right from the very beginning.  See how delightfully this works.
But our seer didn’t just nurture his prophecy with idle words, or leave its outcome entirely to chance. Let’s not disregard that the seed didn’t just sprout, once it was planted. It took constant prodding and nurturing.
Just look at the swift response to that unfortunate editorial in the paper the other day. It could only have been a terrible happenstance that the cartoon his party commissioned in response turned out to be so gruesome and more inciting than the original offending item.
Anyone who looked at it could tell that the intent was to restore calm and decry divisive comments, in the same manner and spirit that his vote to remove funding from the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) was intended for the better good of the nation.  That it didn’t work out that way was just unfortunate, or maybe just more collateral damage, as he described the loss of jobs at GINA precipitated by his actions.
The AFC leader was also right in wishing for low electricity rates for Linden. As a matter of fact he would not have been wrong in wanting lower electricity rates for all of Guyana.
Why then did he vote against the Amaila Falls Hydroelectricity Project, which would stimulate new industries in areas like Linden; facilitate smelter activity that would revitalize the bauxite industry; and provide some vertical integration; support the country’s LCD strategy; reduce reliance on costly fossil fuels; provide employment in the interior, and provide lower electricity costs for all of Guyana, you ask?
Who knows all that lies in the hearts of men?