Is Guyana dead or dying?

Jun 26, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of Guyana’s most prominent citizens, very well educated, with lots of money and also a strident critic of the Jagdeo presidency, said to me on the telephone on Monday morning, that he is losing hope about change in Guyana. We talked and we looked at how disappointing are so many persons and organizations in this country.
People you expect to defend the rights of the Guyanese citizens, the poor, the victimized, and the powerless, are invisible. And when you do hear them speaking, whatever they have to say is never about the loss of freedom, never about any condemnation of the nastiest disrespect shown to sacred democratic principles by the PPP Government.
I specifically mentioned Raphael Trotman in my conversation. I voted for him to be the Head of Government/State in the 2006 election. I will have a deeper feeling of frustration of AFC naivety than my attitude to other opposition groupings. How does it preserve one’s hope when one finds out through the media that Mr. Trotman had a secret consultation with President Jagdeo.
The AFC didn’t see the obligation of informing the nation that its leader was meeting or met with President Jagdeo. We only read about it when this newspaper brought it out. To date, Mr. Trotman has not told us what the President said to him perhaps because the President may have asked Mr. Trotman for confidentiality. So if the President told Trotman the radio monopoly is a good thing, we will never know, because Mr. Trotman may have sworn to secrecy.
On Tuesday, Professor Clive Thomas denounced the rounding up of Guyanese illegals in Barbados and urged that the Guyana Government stands up for these people. Thomas, an authority on Guyana’s political economy, should know that it is the very Government’s policies that these people ran away from.
When you see people like Trotman, Thomas and others behaving like this, then you can understand why the gentleman I spoke to on the phone is becoming pessimistic about the future of Guyana. I grew up in this country where lesser violations than what we live with in 2009 brought angry protest and tempestuous denunciations. Today, the population of Guyana closes its eyes to some of the worst abrogation of rights in the society.
This woman showed me the length of the hair of her two sons that caused a private high school to decide to evict them if they didn’t cut it. Take a look at my photograph on this page. Those little boys’ hair is shorter than mine only it spreads out more. I am saying that no way in the seventies, the Guyanese population would have accepted their expulsion.
UG students, the WPA, the PPP, the women movements would have descended on that school with shouts and pickets. If Mae’s cannot accept a child with my hairstyle then a Rasta kid will not be allowed in. Why is it that a male cannot have long hair in school? What is wrong with long hair? Is this what we have come to after our glorious struggle in the seventies and eighties?
I know a mother that was crying for days after her child was expelled from that school. Two Parliamentarians knew about it and stayed silent.
What about the brutal mistreatment of our street vendors many of whom are single parents. Last week, Mayor Green intervened and reversed an order from Minister Benn about the removal of a group of vendors. I challenge Robeson Benn to tell me that he doesn’t know that a seafood company has literally, virtually, legally and effectively taken over Holmes Street. This company has its refrigerated containers permanently on the street virtually cutting off traffic. In the midst of that madness, the Ministry of Works is hunting down street vendors.
That is only half of the picture. The other half is the vote. The seafood company cannot give the ruling organisation and opposition parties the number of votes they need for a good showing in national elections.
The vendors are many. But the company is tolerated while the vendors become preys.
Life is an inexplicable thing. These same vendors will run towards Mr. Jagdeo or Mr. Corbin or Mr. Trotman and shake their hands and smile with them instead of chasing them if and when they visit downtown Georgetown on their meet-the-people tours.
Don’t forget that line in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Jesus turned to his disciples and said;
Surely you are not saying
“We have the resources
To save the poor from their lot.
They will be poor always
Pathetically struggling
Look at the good thing you’ve got”

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