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Dangerous illusions
Sep 05, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I have always felt that Guyana is not going to move into a meaningful future if its leaders in power, at a deep psychological level, cannot comprehend the reality in which Guyana is enveloped. A country faces tragic and dangerous times when all around are woes, crises and failures and the leaders point to the bright horizons that lie in wait. Disaster has to come, because the leaders live in a world of illusions.
Mr. Bush became unpopular because he kept seeing victory in Iraq while all the time the war was going badly. If Mr. Bush’s party loses the November elections, the Iraqi war will be one of the decisive factors.
I have written several times on this page that it becomes almost impossible to tell when a leader is sincere in the things he/she enunciates or just plain devious. Tony Blair of the UK is a perfect example. In Guyana, the macabre role of illusions has never been more graphic than in the collective psyche of PPP leaders, both past and present.
Guyana has got into the mess it is in even though October 1992 offered this county a priceless avenue from which the Phoenix could have been reborn. Guyana today resembles the Guyana all of us knew who lived though the late seventies and the decade of the eighties. One of the contributory factors for this national cul-de-sac is the illusions the PPP leadership live with. Guyana under the historically great party, the PPP has to have an evanescent future because after all the PPP is invincible. Guyana, then is marching on to permanent elevation because the PPP leads the nation. This kind of illusion has dangerous implications.
There is no need to go into any comparative assessment to understand these implications. The facts of a pessimistic Guyana are mountainous. We can start with the words of the President of the country himself. It was President Jagdeo, one day before the opening of Carifesta, who told his press conference that the Ministry of Works is unable to attract engineers. This is sixteen years after that golden moment in October 1992. Yet small Suriname hasn’t got that problem. It was the President himself, at the opening of the Centre for Information Technology at UG who used the word “atrocious” to describe the state of the science laboratories at that institution. That was five years ago. The atrociousness is still there.
One day after Carifesta was over, GPL’s main office endured several hours of blackout in which customers were left stranded because the computers went down. It was the last day for payment for one of our editorial staff at Kaieteur. We showed off Guyana during Carifesta for our fellow Caribbean citizens to see. We showed off Guyana at the Rio Summit for South American leaders to see. We showed off Guyana for Commonwealth Finance Ministers to see. But we never put Guyana on display for Guyanese. One day after Carifesta, electricity disruptions visited several districts in Georgetown including where this columnist lives.
Against this lugubrious environment, PPP leaders extol the social vibrancy of Guyana. Is it illusion or deception? I saw this dilemma yesterday when someone showed me a recent issue of the Chronicle. I read the Chronicle only on-line and most times I miss it. This person told me that I should not fail to comment on an interview Mrs. Jagan gave the newspaper and was published on August 17th, 2008. In that exchange, Mrs. Jagan boldly asserted that Guyana is governed by a coalition of the PPP and a Civic Component. This remains one of the exotic mysteries of politics anywhere in the world.
Who or what is the Civic? The answer is that there is no such thing. It is an absurdity to say the Guyana Government has people from civil society in the cabinet and those people have their own social policies which they execute inside the Government of Guyana and which the PPP tolerates because it is a coalition. Is Guyana even run by the PPP? How can the PPP as a ruling party, have its Parliamentarians give approval to 12 Parliamentary Bills and the President vetoes all of them.
Why did the Bills reach the Parliament in the first place?
It was Mrs. Jagan’s admirer, Mr. Rickey Singh, who shocked his readers in the Chronicle a few months back, by referring to President Jagdeo’s style of government as based on the maximum leadership syndrome. This is coming from a staunch supporter of the PPP Government. On the optimistic side, David Dabydeen, who I met two weeks ago, doesn’t seem to be enchanted with President Jagdeo any more.
Mrs. Jagan ended her interview by saying that there is an all-embracing government in Guyana today. What!
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