When you talk, this Government gets annoyed but…

Aug 23, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

They say we must not make choices for our children. Before their thought patterns are formed, you can tell them what not to do. As they grow into adulthood, they should be left to make their own choices.

My daughter knew that I was not interested in Carifesta period! I made my choice based on theoretical considerations.

When countries are poor and nothing positive looks like it will appear on the horizon, the government seeks to divert attention. It is commonly referred to as “bread and circus.” This is an old process; very old.

What unpopular governments do is they get their people all excited by some entertainment programme. They create a national holiday and fete the masses or they invent a festival and the nation goes wild with the entertainment that follows. That is why it is nicknamed, “bread and circus.”

How ironic that a PPP Government is celebrating Carifesta when the PPP referred to it in 1972 when Burnham hosted it as “bread and circus.”

How can PPP leaders face this nation when that was the label the PPP newspaper the Mirror used to describe the first Carifesta. Of course the answer to that is extremely simple. When in opposition try to criticize as hard as possible.

When you get into power, forget what you said when you were in opposition Can the second poorest country in Caricom afford to hold Carifesta?

The answer is no. But the “bread and circus” formula is a dire necessity at this time because nothing ebullient on the economic front is happening. The traditional pattern of “diversion” in politics is very much alive in Guyana.

After Carifesta will come the big protest rally against the signing of the EPA. No doubt just like countless populist dictators in the past including our own Forbes Burnham, President Jagdeo will address a rally, either in Berbice at Babu John or at the National Park.

Thousands of GAWU, NAACIE and PPP supporters will be bussed to the event. President Jagdeo will be garlanded. Then the demagoguery will flow. The Europeans will be lambasted for continuing colonialism under a modern guise.

The EPA will be denounced as First World bullying. The state media will carry huge portraits of the President as he addressed the rally and you will see photographs of the crowds as they applaud the every word of their President. This is what theorists who study politics call “diversion.”

The Carifesta diversion is on, but predictably things fell apart on “ticket day.” My daughter told me she wants to go to Carifesta. I felt that was her decision and I should not interfere even though I was not in the least interested.

I dropped her off at her friends where they would go to the National Cultural Centre to collect tickets for the opening night. She was particularly interested in the steel orchestra from Trinidad.

What I saw on Middle Street outside the Carifesta Secretariat forced me to call my daughter immediately to tell her to back off, forget about Carifesta.

Hundreds and hundreds of persons were standing up for hours in an endless line. There was no way, from what I saw, those hundreds could get tickets.

The insane incompetence forced my daughter from the National Cultural Centre and the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall. She went to the Theatre Guild in Kingston and still the madness was unending.

Here is a Government that knew long in advance that it was hosting this festival and there would be an opening day for which tickets will be distributed.

Yet true to form it put on display its incomprehensible ignorance and its unfathomable incompetence when it comes to administering any process.

This Government gets annoyed when you describe the way they run Guyana. They are livid that these reports get outside and people have a terrible impression of Guyana, They lecture to you that you should not expose your country so negatively to the outside world. They hate the private media for this.

I guess we will soon hear either today or tomorrow the exhortation that we have thousands of visitors in Guyana and we, in the media should not write anything to tarnish the country’s image.

This is a subtle way of greeting you to shut your mouth on their unbelievable mediocrity. The people who lacerate this nation’s image are the Guyana Government itself.

Look how they treated their own citizens who wanted a ticket to see something that would bring the Government itself political capital.

I have written several times on this page that even when the Forbes Burnham Government was broke, it still performed more creditably in administering this nation than the present PPP cabal. What a mess we are in.

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