The numbers syndrome
- By The Rambler
- Published 9th May, 2008
Here’s a twenty-four thousand dollar question for you: which May Day circus drew the biggest crowd? If you can answer this question it will be proved that “ your wit makes wise things foolish”, and that you have more hair or your head than wit inside. Initially May Day, or Labour Day, was observed in honour of working people. In 2008 it was used for counting the number of people who had gone to each of the four public meetings organised with great labour lost by the three main political parties and a nascent one. And so , each of the three greatest traditional parties claims to have hosted the largest attendance, each having made the fill of 15,000 partizans. Only Grégoire's party asserts itself to be above the lot , since according to its official records it had beaten them all by attaining the more than honourable score of 20,000.
But surely 15,000 is only an approximate figure forwarded by those who were hired to count the audiences at the other three meetings. The precise figures must have been 15,001, 15,002, and 15,003.
One of the parties was accused to having brought Chinese and Indian workers to its Labour Day gathering. Really this is baffling. What's wrong if workers, whichever citizenship they hold, do attend a Labour Day rally? And how can they say with so much certainty that the foreign workers were Chinese and Indians? Couldn’t they have been Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis too?
In any case, it can safely be said that there were more than the 15,000 claimed by each political party and the 20,000 adduced by the new born political party which is not one yet.
Surely there were several thousands more who were there in spirit – those who were held elsewhere and who could therefore not make it those who were sick or old and bedridden at home or in the hospital; those who were abroad; those who have gone to their eternal abode in the cemetery and who would otherwise certainly have been present physically. Another factor to be noted is that each person who was there represented a household of at least five.
And that makes a pretty large crowd. The briyani makers must have had a hell of a swell day in the midst of an impending rice shortage.
But surely 15,000 is only an approximate figure forwarded by those who were hired to count the audiences at the other three meetings. The precise figures must have been 15,001, 15,002, and 15,003.
One of the parties was accused to having brought Chinese and Indian workers to its Labour Day gathering. Really this is baffling. What's wrong if workers, whichever citizenship they hold, do attend a Labour Day rally? And how can they say with so much certainty that the foreign workers were Chinese and Indians? Couldn’t they have been Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis too?
In any case, it can safely be said that there were more than the 15,000 claimed by each political party and the 20,000 adduced by the new born political party which is not one yet.
Surely there were several thousands more who were there in spirit – those who were held elsewhere and who could therefore not make it those who were sick or old and bedridden at home or in the hospital; those who were abroad; those who have gone to their eternal abode in the cemetery and who would otherwise certainly have been present physically. Another factor to be noted is that each person who was there represented a household of at least five.
And that makes a pretty large crowd. The briyani makers must have had a hell of a swell day in the midst of an impending rice shortage.
