Massive hypocrisy, massive failure this Christmas

Dec 25, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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There has to be a moment of reflection in the life of every voter. He/she must ask the question; “Did our leader make our country a better place since we last elected them?” Judging a government’s performance is not a complicated study of mathematical science. In fact, the economist and accountant can easily tell you if a nation’s economy had an impressive showing after the calendar is over.
Did the Government do well in 2008? This article here was not intended to deal with blackouts in any major way.
I know I had to complete the column early because obviously, the editor would want it as soon as possible because of the amount of work that has to be put into the Christmas edition.
There were many chores facing me on December 24, so I needed to get the column out of the way the night before. At 22.00 hours, on December 23, blackout came. Power returned on December 24 at 11.00 hours. It meant that for the Christmas season, (I am typing this piece at the very moment the electricity returned so I do not know what will happen on Christmas Day) we have had thirteen hours of electricity disruption.
My December 24 schedule was ruined because this essay had to be done. Where I live, we get daily stoppage of electricity flow so I ceased buying ice cream. Guess what? I resumed buying ice cream on December 22. All of it was spoilt this time around.
Against this huge manifestation of incompetence, the Guyana Government used the Chronicle to score points against the Georgetown City Council. The Chronicle featured on its front page, an aging Liliendaäl drainage pump with rotting parts.
Let us leave out the argument that the City Council is starved of funds by central government, what about the countless manifestations of dilapidation of things under the direct control of the Guyana Government.
Let us hope our media houses do their work. The first place to stop at is the University of Guyana and you will see run down buildings that look like they belong to a ghost town.
The very people that saw it fit to embarrass the City Council, ended up making themselves look like effete clowns when they could not provide electricity on Christmas Eve to six villages on the lower East Coast, beginning from Subryanville and extending to Ogle, a stretch that takes in the Caricom Secretariat and three suburbs where most of the foreign dignitaries live.
Talk to the diplomats in my area about how they feel about the blackouts. They are polite not tell us that we are congenital fools to be continuously electing a destructive government. So they ignored their massive failure to deliver electricity; they ignored their massive hypocrisy in accusing the City Council of a form of behaviour that they, themselves, have excelled in – incompetence – to bask in the glory of the opening of the Berbice Harbour Bridge (no doubt soon to be titled after Papa Cheddi, Mama Janet or the third great one).
How many times I am wrong about the incredible, unbelievable inability of the PPP Government to move Guyana forward? Let us see how many months will pass before this cheap, ugly bridge will begin to lay itself down on the water of Berbice River. When it happens, I will recall this article.
After 42 years of Independence, we bridged the Berbice River with a low cost structure that has no aesthetic appearance. It is the kind of make-shift facility that great armies erect in small poor, countries. Now the laugh begins.
Here is what the government’s own newspaper did. Instead of hiding the cheapness and ugliness of the bridge, the Guyana Times printed a supplement and showed two large photographs of similar spans being constructed? Guess by whom? American soldiers! Look at page five of the supplement and you will see the identical erection being set up by American soldiers in maybe Iraq or in some poor country.
They had to use those photographs. The Government couldn’t publish other images because countries in the 21st century do not construct such war-time edifices as what we just put across the Berbice River. They put up lovely aesthetic bridges as what our small neighbour, Suriname has done.
The President and the PPP cannot see the historic irony that the bridge will become. When we look at it, today, tomorrow or ten years from now, it is testimony to Guyana’s permanent poverty.
Finally, the President promised management changes at Guysuco in 2009 because Guysuco didn’t perform. Has the Guyana Government performed? Let us hope Guyana sees a government change in the same year.
Have an elevating holiday season! My love to you on this Christmas Day!

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