Rotting human bodies in a failed state

Sep 16, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Make a distinction between what the Government is in charge of and what the private sector owns. Then look at the condition of both.
The President is always invited to give the feature address at the opening of a new business or related events of the private sector. A recurring theme of his is that the investment community should keep expanding. His latest charge to Guyana’s capitalist class is that it must move into plantation-style agriculture (made during his address at the granting of international certification of the Ogle airport – again, I repeat it is foolish to switch regional flights from Timehri to Ogle; Ogle should remain a domestic airport).
No business person dares to get up and give Mr. Jagdeo a lecture on what is national development when Mr. Jagdeo is sermonizing his hosts on the need for expansion by the private sector. A good place to start is with the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes envisaged a partnership between citizenry and state in which the latter assumes control over the society but with the guarantee that the state will see to the preservation of the well-being of the state and the territory.
Mr. Jagdeo may not be an ingenious political leader but he is smart enough to know which turf he should stay away from. At his press conferences and his countless deliveries to the business people, Mr. Jagdeo gets away with any untenable statement. The press is timid and the investors are afraid to be seen as hostile to Mr. Jagdeo.
It is not that these investors are shaken with fear. It is the justified trepidation they have that any innocuous criticism that has nothing to do with attacking the Government will be seen as just that.
The essential difference between the PPP and the PNC from the 50s onwards is that the PPP was led by a fascist ideologue, Mrs. Jagan, who had an ideological intolerance for criticism against her “historic” vanguard party and Dr. Jagan, a leader born with intellectual and political insecurities. Out of this emerged the process of paranoia that has destroyed the popularity of the PPP. On the other hand, the PNC was founded by African middle class politicians who felt very assured in what they were doing.
The Private Sector Commission issued a servile and insulting statement about the free, open atmosphere at its dinner two weeks ago which allowed questions to be asked of the President. The independent media did not bother to carry that self-serving prayer because the Guyanese people know that Mr. Jagdeo will not take likely to criticism from the private sector. Of all people who should know that is the Private Sector Commission Head, Gerry Gouveia. He castigated the Government for buying two unsuitable anti-crime helicopters and was given a tongue-lashing by Mr. Jagdeo. The business people are not going to subject Mr. Jagdeo to any trenchant probe because they afraid their words will be subject to the PPP’s historic paranoia syndrome.
The press can press Mr. Jagdeo though. He should be asked what the achievements of the Hobbesian state are. The Leviathan cannot supply electricity, water, traffic lights, street lights, good roads, a functioning university, proper schools, clean towns and cities, a working ferry service, etc. The sectors that come under the jurisdiction of the Leviathan have all collapsed. Bodies are rotting in the state-owned mortuary in Essequibo.
The location of the mortuary is important. This is one of the heartlands of “Cheddiism.” It makes for extremely tragic reading when you read that families came from abroad to cremate their loved ones but had to bury them on the spot because the mortuary wasn’t functioning and the bodies were rotting.
I would like to ask those relatives who they voted for in the last election. East Indians in Berbice and Essequibo should think long and hard on the reason for the breakdown of that Essequibo mortuary. When you put leaders in a government to last forever, their psychology goes in another direction. They do not remain ordinary people that would fight to do great things for their voters because they know those voters are so helpless that they will ballot for them for all times. There is thus no psychological reason for feeling that you will lose the next election.
Unless East Indians of this country understand that important lesson in life, the PPP is not going to perform. Instead of fixing ferries, water, lights, roads and mortuaries, they will bask in their luxurious hold on power. The PPP paid some West Indian star cricketers to play here last week. What a waste of money when human bodies are rotting all over the place!

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