The legless man in a sea of lawlessness and the real slum dogs

Feb 24, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was chatting with Christopher Ram the other day and I mentioned the name of Tacuma Ogunseye. A freedom fighter that did sufficient for the liberation of post-colonial Guyana, for which we should show some gratitude. I told Chris though I disagree with the present shape of Tacuma’s praxis, I could understand the profound psychological distraught that led him to his present political discourse.
Brave, phenomenal Guyanese took to the streets with Herculean energy and prodigious willingness to fight against human rights violations during the twenty eight year old domination of the PNC under both Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte.
I pontificated to Chris that it really disturbs your psychology to see what we were arrested for and faced victimization over in that era is being practiced by the PPP Government and the Jagdeo presidency right here and now. I have heard sufficient talk from all and sundry about the distinction between the PPP Government and the Jagdeo presidency to acknowledge such a difference. Yet these venalities go unprotested.
A President of a country in the modern Caribbean adjacent to some of the world’s admired democracies knew he wasn’t legally married yet allowed his common-law wife to be named as the First Lady. And he happily walks away from the deception as if there aren’t opposition parties in Guyana.
Marvin Gaye rose to fame with his anti-war song, “What’s Going On” and that is the only question in town. The answer is lawlessness. This is an oligarchic land where the man on horseback rides over his sharecropping employees and whips them when he wants to, humiliates them when he wants and dismembers them when he wants to.
When the courageous few inform the police, the comandante appears on horseback too on the plantation of the oligarch with cigar in mouth; they retire in the oligarch’s garden to have a drink. This is life in Guyana. From Burnham to oligarchy; the story of a failed nation
The lawlessness has no boundaries in space and time. An employee loses both legs while on duty and suddenly becomes a ‘nowhere man’ not the kind the Beatles sang about, but a discarded ‘no where man’ because money becomes the big issue. He has to be paid.
So no one can determine who he was working for when the injury occurred. The oligarchic servants go silently about their business and “no where man’ pleads with the courageous few to help him.
But this is the territory of the man on horse back. Remember we had that guy before? Remember Burnham rode through the streets of Georgetown sharing out Bristol cigarettes (that was in short supply and too expensive for the smokers of south Georgetown to buy) and cassava sticks.
We got Burnham though. His rule was sliding. And it slid when he died. We fought him and we weakened him. Today, he is quarreling from his grave shouting out we were unfair to him because the newer oligarchs are getting away with more than murder. The ‘no where man’ has children. But they are the wretched of the earth. They are not the slum dog millionaires but the real slum dogs that no one wants to embrace. There are no pickets lines for the ‘no where man’ and his suffering offspring. But they were when six employees were unjustly fired from Republic Bank.
They were when five women were physically and sexually assaulted in full view of onlookers outside a Sheriff Street night club. I was there with a placard. The picket line was justified. Where are the placards for the feetless man? What’s going on in Guyana?
I’ll tell you what’s going on. But first here are a few lines from that Marvin Gaye classic
“Picket lines and picket signs
Don’t punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you could see
What’s going on?”
I’ll tell you what’s going on. Lawlessness! That is what is going on. A father lost both legs in an industrial accident but no opposition party or human rights group comes to his rescue. I’ll tell you what’s going on.
The police search a businessman’s home, collect the money they found, have not charged him, but mysteriously the money is still to be returned. I’ll tell you what’s going on. The oligarchs laugh. In the meantime, money has to be found for the real slum dogs. They have to have to be fed and be schooled. Play that Marvin Gaye melody again for me please!

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The legless man in a sea of lawlessness and the real slum dogs

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