Griffith, English, Whyte-Nedd and the march of elected dictatorship

Sep 10, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Guyana is indeed an enduring tragedy of the 20th century. You picked up your news papers in 1950, and there was no good news about the future of British Guiana. Twenty years later, your newspapers were filled with gloom about Guyana’s future under the Burnham dictatorship. Just under forty years after that, your newspapers paint a story of the same dictatorship but this time an elected one (for more information on the concept of elected dictatorship see the work of American scholar, Fareed Zakaria – good stuff to read).
I always have my breakfast with the newspapers by my side (Heaven forbid; not all the newspapers, the KN and SN only – those are the only newspapers worth reading. Sorry Randy!) ).Yesterday morning was just another day on the reporting on elected dictatorship. But sometimes, the tragedies hurt deeply. They hurt because the world has so many problems, and each country tries its best to survive. But we in Guyana never learn and we don’t want to. The PJ Pattersons, Owen Arthurs, James Mitchells have come, changed their countries for the better and have gone. We have the Goldings, Thompsons, Mannings and they will continue where their predecessors have left off.
In Guyana, the tragedy goes on. The tragedy of under-development, poverty, corruption, race-hate politics; race-biased exercise of governmental power, mad exodus, humiliation of Guyanese at the world’s airports, poor educational standards, derelict public buildings, run-down infrastructure, and the list goes on.
On Tuesday evening, I sat with my wife for two hours on one of the half-dead benches at the Eve Leary seawall by the Round House reminiscing on our courtship days on the seawall. I courted my wife for six months before we got married, and almost each day, in that period, we visited the seawall. This was in the seventies.
Go to that place today and you will see how our country moves backward rather than forward. There were about a dozen children bouncing on a trampoline that someone set up. It was an area of darkness. A number of benches look out towards the ocean and they are all very, very dirty. If you are a tourist and you look at those benches, you will never sit on them. This is the physical side of a country that got Independence in 1966 and that all the economists in the world that are familiar with this land refer to as a country with vast wealth and enormous potential.
If you take a trip to the Camp Street seawall you will see the wealth and potential sailing away. Clement Rohee wrote a letter in this newspaper last Tuesday in which he said those who think that the PPP Government is removed from the problems of Guyana are sailing. Mr. Rohee has sailed a long time ago and sailed away with him was the future of this nation. I will send Rohee a copy of one of the best songs of Barry Manilow, titled, “Ships”. The PPP’s ships sailed away a long, long time ago. But even if the country does not have money to make us look good like Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica must we continue with the politics of brutality, dictatorship and race.
I picked up Kaieteur News and saw that our Chief Education Officer, Genevieve Whyte-Nedd has acted in that position on and off since 2000 and has not been confirmed. She retires next year and if not confirmed now will stand to lose a lot of money. Yet the President ensured that his post-presidential days will be not be as fashionable as when Michael Jackson owned Neverland, but quite handsome. How can any government be so blatantly immoral?
This same President that made sure he lives comfortably after he goes out in 2011 (I doubt that; Mr. Jagdeo will be the PPP’s presidential candidate in 2011) heads a government that does extremely painful things to senior public servants. Ingrid Griffith acted as Trade Commissioner for years. When it was time for conformation, it was denied her. Today she sits in an obscure room somewhere in the GRA’s building. Ivor English, Head of Transport and Harbours, one of the most mannerly and urbane public servants you can encounter, with a Masters in Harbour Management Studies, was unceremoniously sent home because he allegedly permitted funds to be spent on the staff club. What was wrong with that? When the private media speak of racial discrimination by this Government, you are accused of incitement as if the stories of Griffith, English and Whyte-Nedd do not exist. They do, and they are going to endanger the life of this country if there are more like those.

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Griffith, English, Whyte-Nedd and the march of elected dictatorship

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