Leslie checks out

Jul 11, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A majority in the leadership of the PPP and the Government do not realise it and perhaps will never come to the awareness that their own words and action contribute to citizens’ rejection of them as the ultimate governors of this country.
Years ago, I think about 2002, I was a judge in a youth parliament debate and the son of a huge leader in the PPP was one of the debaters. He lost out as the winner for the position of best parliamentarian. The next day, his father had a telephone conversation with me in which he ridiculed all the judges. He thought that his son should have been the winner.
I felt pity for my country after that conversation. There was a group of people who were in charge of Guyana, who give the biggest jobs to their family members and relatives, who, just with the wave of a finger, dismiss people from their jobs, overlook people for contracts and continue on this perverted course since they came into power. But these people can feel hurt when one of their own is not given a recognition or accolade that they feel they are entitled to.
The rulers of this land who deny entitlements to so many, many Guyanese citizens can have the temerity to discuss the denial of entitlements to their own. In the case of the model parliament, his son didn’t deserve to win.
What goes through the minds of the rulers of this land when the newspapers and television newscasts show the population the political directors being flown out for medical treatment that the average Guyanese cannot obtain here? These “champions” of Guyana’s greatness, these preachers of Guyana’s greatness do not hide the fact that they seek medical treatment abroad, totally oblivious to the resentment it causes in a country where people die at the Georgetown Public Hospital awaiting the doctor’s hand. So we come to Dr. Leslie Ramsammy.
His announcement that he is going for a check-up has that ironic tone as that of the Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) who collects taxes but does not pay any. Even if the World Bank arrangement in the creation of the GRA allowed for the exclusion of the GRA head in paying taxes, the so-called historic PPP couldn’t see that it sent the wrong moral signal to the rest of the country.
How should the people of a country feel when a high level member of the party that runs the government (for clarification sake not Dr. Ramsammy and definitely not Robeson Benn, so after the publication of this article, I won’t have to fear libel from the latter) chose to let his two children be born in the US and not his own country?
Yet these are the very people that criticise the press when it points out the unbecoming conduct of the hierarchy in the governorship of Guyana. We in the media are exhorted not to rundown the country because it will incite foreigners to look down upon Guyana. Has the consideration ever been made that we report on unacceptable behaviour and unreasonable policies of the Government of Guyana?
Why should we not tell the nation that one of its law-makers chose to let his two children be born in the US and not his own country? I do believe that the media should not invent stories and should not seek to exaggerate the faults of a government. The media has responsibilities.
What needs to be said is that almost ninety nine percent of the reporting on governance in this country is in the realm of facts. If there is no bad egg, the media will be exposed if we invent one. I doubt whether any media house could survive in this land if it does dish up a daily dose of wild reporting, unbearable speculation and obnoxious fictions. This is a nation of decent people and they won’t put up with that.
The truth is that the bad eggs in government proliferate. Back to Ramsammy; he checked out of Guyana a few days ago for a medical check up in the US. Why couldn’t the examination be done through the medical system in Guyana over which he presides? Can’t one have a check up in Guyana? I don’t want to focus exclusively on Dr. Ramsammy because he is not alone in a pattern of action that leads commentators to question the obligations of the rulers to Guyana.
Do you know that the tickets for Carifesta were printed in Trinidad? There may be an answer for that. And I would love to hear it.

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