by Max Sterling

I will continue to refuse to recognise that political organisation ­ aptly referred to as a KLEPTOCRACY ­ as my government. All Grenadians should recognise their right to revolt against an administration as repulsive as Mitchell's NNP.

After all it is our right to refuse allegiance to and to resist with every bit of energy in us, this bunch ­ especially as its tyranny and its insufficiency are great and unendurable.

I will always quarrel not with far-off or far-out foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those corrupt administrators. It is my view, and I dare say, deep rooted belief, that the majority of people are opposed o the modus operandi of the NNP Cartel and its inferior operatives, and who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them ­ but sit down with their hands in their pockets and say ­ Who you go put?

They are among the many that spend their time hoping for an end while doing nothing in earnest and with effect as if hoping were indeed a process. The way we participate in elections is as to say: I cast my vote, per-chance as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it up to the majority.

So if the majority turns out to be like me, then a minority with their perverted ideals can rule over us and wreak havoc on our international image, dooming us to an abysmal future, as has been the case over the last twelve years.

Just look at the recent expose on the NNP Cartel's second in command over the oil and natural gas fiasco and tell me if that is not enough for a similar effort by civic society as was the case in 1973/74 by what was dubbed the Committee of 22 to emerge strongly.

We have to realise through experience that every time the Kleptocracy takes a direction fate delivers a different reality and so they continue to swim against the tide. Our people for the most part, yes, the silent majority are really the voice of God.

Negative and dastardly/reprehensible statements against two of the opposition's elected officials in the persons of Hons. Nazim Burke and Peter David ­ have borne opposite fruits. These two elected opposition officials were handsomely elected to office without a vote being in question.

The hype led by Mitchell himself, against Bernard Coard and his team at the Richmond Hill prisons and his several attempts to pin their freedom on the parliamentary opposition has resulted in London's Privy Council handing down a binding ruling on the morning of our 33rd independence anniversary, opposite to the sentiments of Mitchell and his Gang at the Botanical Gardens.

The other cog in Mitchell's wheel is his government's perceived constant interference in the judiciary through its lead attack dog who tries to ridicule judges after their ruling against government time and time again. Would the judges continue to rule according to providence in their re sentencing of Bernard Coard and others especially when the Law Lords mandated them to take into consideration the progress of the individuals over the twenty-three years they have been incarcerated?

Lest we forget, Coard and his team have contributed greatly to the prison becoming a reformatory in the strictest sense of the word.

On several occasions the Richmond Hill Institution produced individuals who received the highest and best results in School Leaving exams, both levels of General Certificate of Education and the CXC, and even at graduate and post graduate levels.

That is the kind of meaningful progress which our judges must take into consideration on re-sentencing day. I have told you time and time again, I can hear the jail door banging as room is being made for probably an equal number to that of Bernard Coard and his colleagues ­ all in the fullness of time!

One would think that as a people we will gather strength from the knowledge of our rich history so as to prevent any similar repeat - but that is not to

be ­ and so we continue to give life to the famous proverb ­ a people who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. Where are the other men and women to join the likes of Lloyd Noel, Eddie Frederick, Anslem Clouden, Dr. Francis Alexis, Sen. Chester Humphrey, Sandra Ferguson, George Worme, and yours truly in expanding our people's desire for good governance?

Instead, I find that the respectable men ­ so-called ­ have immediately drifted from their position, and despair of their country when their country has more reason to despair of them. But under the name and order of civil government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from an immoral it becomes - as it were - unmoral , not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

Those who while they disapprove of the character and measures of the NNP Cartel, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters in lieu of favours, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform.

As a people we should be mindful that if we are cheated out of a single dollar by our own neighbour, we do not rest satisfied with knowing that we are cheated or with saying we are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay us our due, but we take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and we see to it that we are never cheated again.

Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides church and state, it divides families, yes, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.

Why do we insist on thinking as a people that under such a corrupt group of unscrupulous people as this that we ought to wait until we have persuaded the majority to change them ­ when I am certain we who object to them are the majority?

Is it that we think if we should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil we're in? Then what are we saying about ourselves as a people? Obviously not much!