While the local television news was being read during last week, my attention was attracted to the announcement by the interviewee at a press conference to pay attention to the ‘algebraic’ equation about to be announced. The journalists were cautioned that they might not understand if they did not listen carefully. I listened and was baffled.
A few days after I was engaged in a court trial in which Messrs Khemraj Ramjattan and Nigel Hughes were on the opposite side. Moses Nagamootoo, 
while waiting his matter in another court, came in to listen to the proceedings, as lawyers often do. During a pause I asked if they understood the ‘algebraic’ equation.
They were all in deep bafflement.
This equation reminded me of the last ‘algebraic’ equation that I learnt in high school which ended in 0. I looked up old mathematics textbooks to see if the Quadratic Equation could help me in deciphering the ‘algebraic’ equation. It is now incomprehensible. I realized that I would get no help there.
My mind then went to the two greatest scientific geniuses of the modern age, Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. I believed their methodologies might give me some help. For the layperson, Newton’s law of gravity is simple enough. It means that physical bodies attract each other in proportion to their mass.
The equation by which he explains his theory is complicated but at least we know what it means. Einstein’s famous equation is far simpler and thus better known. It is E = mc2. It means energy = mass x speed of light squared. It has something to do with nuclear energy.
The anecdotes suggest that these geniuses made at least some discoveries from observed phenomena – Newton from an apple falling from a tree and Einstein from a fast moving train. I tried to think of what possible observable phenomena might have triggered the astonishing discovery of the ‘algebraic’ equation.
Bearing in mind the profession of the inventor of the ‘algebraic’ equation, I began to consider political developments in Guyana. I found a treasure trove. I discovered that by being able to form the government after the elections with 48 per cent of the vote, the PPP/C actually won the elections. Having won the elections, they are entitled to the support of the opposition for any bill or motion and the opposition is not entitled to present any bill or motion, much less get support for it.
One interesting observable phenomenon is that I said in a recent article that at the upcoming Congress of the PPP, the reduction of the PPP/C’s vote at the last elections would be attributed to the PPP’s weak organization on the ground. But the inventor said that I was wrong and that I am trying to influence the Congress because the reduction in the PPP/C’s vote was due to the weak organization on the ground. In relation to the Congress I also said that there would be unanimous support for the line of the leadership as announced in the Central Committee Report. The inventor suggested that my strategy would fail because there would be unity at the Congress.
The inventor did not repeat that the PPP lost the elections because of rigging. The allegation is no longer an observable phenomenon.
The new one is that the PPP lost votes because of lack of work on the ground. But the inventor said that these problems have all been addressed and solved. The inventor therefore expects to observe the phenomenon that the PPP/C will roar past the 50 per cent mark at the next elections, just like in the film, The Mouse That Roared, in which the Duchy of Grand Fenwick declared war on the US expecting to lose but roared to victory instead. The comic genius, Peter Sellers, acted in the film.
I contemplated for a long while and finally I got the ‘eureka’ moment.
The inventor is a formidable and multi-talented inventor who multi-tasks all the time. He approves leave for individual senior police officers, has to track down all those criminals who brutally gunned down two persons in the course of robbery on the very day that he was announcing the ‘algebraic’ equation, issue passports, gun licences, track non-existent TIP victims and perhaps plot to deploy an ‘algebraic’ equation against the US in the upcoming war over the TIP issue which we hope to lose, but might win.
The inventor, being discombobulated and disoriented by his prodigious multi-tasking, mistakenly announced his invention as ‘algebraic’ when it is in fact a ‘chemical’ formula. He discovered that the combination of the elements, SN, KN, MN, RR and KR, would be so powerful that it would lead to an enormous explosion and demolish to zero, in his mind, everything in its path, including the PPP. This is what he was warning against because it is his worst nightmare.
My fortuitous discovery of the meaning of the formula is due to my good fortune which I can only attribute to the fact that ‘goat nah bite me.’
