President Jagdeo destroyed my romanticist symbol

Jun 07, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I met my wife in 1978 when she worked as a lab technician at the Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation (GPC) at the Kingston seawall, next to the now defunct Luckhoo Swimming Pool. I would pick her up each afternoon and after completion of the meal in a butter-cup that my mom sent for her, we would perambulate the sea wall from Kingston to Vlissengen Road, listening to Neil Diamond and Johnny Mathis.
We always ended up back at GPC. This site held a place in my heart. It was where I met my soul mate. Over the years, the GPC was made into the Government Analyst Department which also housed the Poison Board. All times when I am on the Kingston seawall, I would gaze at the building that played such an important part in my post-teenager life.

One day, an investor or investors promised to build a hotel right on the site of my romanticist symbol. This was supposed to be a fourteen-level complex to be run under the Marriott brand. So the Jagdeo Government demolished a neat, good, large building that served the people of Guyana. At the same time, the Government moved the sewage line at Fort Groyne to accommodate the hotel. There is no such building to be constructed. The Marriott dream was a mirage. Somebody got fooled. But that is not the point. The issue is how a politician or group of politicians could be so incompetent.
With increasing frequency, I encounter former PNC Government Ministers and former top people in the PNC, and they would say to me, “Freddie, look how y’all fight down Burnham but look what we are facing today.” They make the pellucid point that the government in 2009 is worse than anything the PNC was in the olden days. Just yesterday, I met Dr. Faith Harding in Nigel’s Supermarket, and it was the same line –“Freddie, look what we have today.”

What we have today makes Forbes Burnham look like the favourite disciple of Jesus Christ. The people of Guyana would not have allowed Forbes Burnham to get away with the perversities, immoralities, tyrannies and profanities that characterize the exercise of power today.
One senior banking executive said to me last night at the gas station that, “these people don’t care what they do.” No one so far has looked at an intriguing comparison in the naked use of power in terms of assassination. Walter Rodney’s death was planned but the plotters arranged the murder in such a way as to cast doubt on a centralized conspiracy. Rodney was killed with an electronic device in his car in the vicinity of the Georgetown Prison. The State’s position on the death was that Rodney was using the instrument to test its destructive value with the intent to bomb the prison when it exploded on his lap.
In the case of Ronald Waddell, the intellectual authors could not have been bothered with generating doubt in the mind of the average citizen. Two assassins came to his car, lit up a flare so they could see their victim clearly then shot him. There could not have been any doubt as to how he died. Two men came with the intention of killing him. That comparative exercise in the method of killing tells a large story of power in Guyana today.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Burnham would have been crucified for many of the things we see Mr. Jagdeo doing. Take the very demolition I referred to above. How could a government destroy an entire public structure that was of architectural value because someone promised them to put up a hotel on the spot where the state building was? Is there such a level of incompetence in government anywhere in the world today? This thing lacks commonsense. One would have expected that the particular government would have ensured that the deal was concluded, all legal ends were tied up, all documentations were in order, and the project would start as soon as the obstacles on the site were removed.

In the case of the Marriott Hotel fiasco, it looked like an investor told someone; “I will build a hotel for you right where that building now stands but first you must take down the building so I can start.” The foolish government was so elated at what the investor said that they did just what they were told. This is incompetence that defies description. The poor economy had to endure the cost of moving the sewage line and the Government Analyst Department. Yet a leading PPP executive has the temerity to call upon PNC leaders to apologize for things done when they ruled Guyana. Funny man he is.

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President Jagdeo destroyed my romanticist symbol

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