A man who cried in the newspaper

Sep 13, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I read all the panegyrics for Mr. Jagdeo’s Government that are printed in the newspapers from businessmen who had similar counterparts in the seventies and eighties. Back then, they too praised Mr. Burnham. Little by little Mr. Burnham was destroying Guyana. As Mr. Burnham inched his way to another piece of unaccountable power, the businessmen didn’t notice that. They kept on showering the praise. Then things fell apart. Then things collapsed. Then things were no more. By the time the country recovered, those businessmen had relocated to the US, Canada, UK, Trinidad and Barbados.
History is repeating itself. As elected dictators in 2009 inch their way towards another illegal possession of Guyana’s resources, the businessmen aren’t noticing it. They are preoccupied with reliving the moments of eulogy that their counterparts in the seventies and eighties heaped on the unelected dictator back then. Yesterday it was unelected dictatorship. Today, it is elected dictatorship but what’s the difference? There is none. The praises go on from our investors. And the opposition and labour unions cry dictatorship. But hey! Wait a minute! I missed something! There is a difference!
I met a few business people several years ago, and last year and even this year and they threw a few revelations at me. They increased my angst. They deepened my pessimism. They told me that elected dictatorship has an ocean of negative features that make it worse than the unelected regime of Forbes Burnham. Some were blunt. Some were harsh. Some say they were being realistic. Then “heresy” came out of their mouths. Then “treason” came out of their mouths. This elected dictatorship of the PPP is in many, many ways worse than when the PNC under Forbes Burnham ruled Guyana.
Sad day for our country when you read those eulogies for Mr. Jagdeo and his Government and you think of the untimely death of David de Caires. It was David de Caires who in tremendous ways used his newspaper, the Stabroek News, to defend the re-birth of the private sector. In his newspaper, the private sector had an indomitable defender. Tragically, as he lay on his sick bed in Barbados, stricken with a heart condition, a heart that for this writer had to bear the strain of the Government’s attack on his newspaper, the songs of admiration for elected dictatorship by our “innovative,” “visionary,” business people played out.
For me, there is no question in my mind that the cruel withdrawal of state advertisements from the Stabroek News for 18 months took its toll on David’s heart. When his one-year memorial service comes around, the admirers of elected dictatorship, no doubt will be there. I will be there too to philosophize in my little corner of the Roman Catholic Brickdam Cathedral on the follies, flaws and failings of the human mind.
So here we are in 2009 and the praises for the little dictators go on. There were the claps and cheers at the Private Sector dinner last week. Now we have the commissioning of international status for the Ogle airport (what a stupid thing to relocate regional flights from the Timehri airport; a new government after 2011 should put a stop to this backwardness). There as with the dinner, the President was the featured speaker. There, as with the dinner, the cheers went up. Reminded me of my days under the unelected dictator, Forbes Burnham.
Have you ever stopped and wondered – where all these business people that praise developments in Guyana go when they are sick? Which universities they send their children to? Which hospitals they seek medical attention for their loved ones. Do their spouses patronize the local boutiques or do they shop at Tiffany’s? (remember that line in the world famous rock song, Hotel California – “her mind is Tiffany twisted. She’s got a Mercedes Benz”). Would they send their children to secondary schools that have no furniture? Do they see to drive in the night on streets that have no lights? Do they endure the sewage overflow in Georgetown?
I like what I read the other day in the newspapers. One of the supporters of elected dictatorship (a businessman) wrote a maudlin letter bitterly crying about the American Embassy’s refusal to give his nephew a student visa to do a medical degree in the US. You could have seen the tears in the letter. I laughed out so loudly that the coffee spilt on my legs and almost crippled me. Hey mister! This is wonderful Guyana where we have nuff development and nuff democracy and good leaders. Why not send your nephew or your kid to become a medical doctor right here in Guyana at UG? Hey mister! Who cares about daily blackouts and overflowing faeces on the streets?

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