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I challenge Minister Robeson Been on this one

Sep 19, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

As you go on living in Guyana, the memories of the Burnham time is fading. I don’t know how those in the broad alliance that fought Burnham feel today about that pessimistic era in their lives. I can only speak about myself. I have no reason to like the Government in those days. Burnham personally hurt me.
But could or should I hold that personal incident and let it obfuscate all the bad things succeeding governments have done in Guyana, leaving Burnham as the worst administration I know? Could or should I deny what is happening to my country and keep lamenting of how bad Burnham was because he tried to ruin me on two occasions?
My conscience rules my life. My conscience tells me that we are living with the exercise of power in the 21st century in Guyana in which many, many aspects and dimensions of that governorship are worse than when Mr. Burnham was in control from 1968 to 1985. The story of the fleeting memories is ubiquitous.
Everywhere you go you see huge symbols of the Burnham epoch just fading into oblivion never to be remembered. In its place you see the rude signs of power assertion, the ugly motifs of self-aggrandizement and the harsh pictures of a permanent tragedy named Guyana.
I have to pass, the new spanking Transport and Harbours Sport Club at Thomas Lands next to the GPSU Sports Hall everyday. No one knows why we do the things we do sometimes. I would pass the building, look at it, reflect on the kind of politicians Robeson Benn and his President and Cabinet colleagues are and how unchanging Guyana is. But on Friday morning I pulled over. I don’t know why. I was on my way to the National Park to jog, anxious to listen to a compilation of songs by Enrique Iglesias that my daughter made for me because I told her I was not interested in the music of Enrique but his father, Julio, and she insisted the son’s songs are just as good.
I saw the sport ground and pulled over and just gazed at it. The Transport and Harbours Sport Club is a colossal testimony to the failure of Guyana as a post-colonial country. Before I go any further, I need to say that I have to be careful what I write about Robeson Benn. As soon as I complete this essay, it is going to three lawyers.
Mr. Benn threatened to sue me for libel because of ambiguity in grammar. That is a very common pronouncement in grammar. But I remember my English teacher, Mrs. Abrams saying that ambiguity in grammar is superfluous once the reader can follow the context.
I wrote about Minister Ramsammy being implicated in the Roger Khan tale of violent mayhem and in the next line discussed Minister Benn and the strike by air traffic controllers. Mr. Benn went on NCN television and Chronicle proclaiming that it could easily be read to mean Benn instead of Ramsammy. I didn’t see it that way. He wanted an apology and got one.
Mr. Benn sent home the Head of Transport and Harbours, Mr. Ivor English over the money he allocated to the reconstruction of the facility. It needs to be mentioned that this is one of the finest public sector workers this country has produced in recent years. Mr. Benn ordered a complete audit of the process. The construction companies staffed by respected engineers provided a detailed outline on expenditure from nails right up.
There was not one single thread of evidence of fraud or over-spending. The Transport and Harbours Sport Complex is complete. It has been handed over to Mr. Benn’s Ministry. But there are big BUTS. But there are still millions owing to the contractors. But Mr. English, for all the decades of service he gave to his country, is still at home.
Now here is the big BUT. But the building has been in disuse since it was taken over by Mr. Benn’s Ministry. I watched at it yesterday. Many parts of it are already going to waste. This is Guyana under the PPP. When we were subjects of the colonial masters, we had dismissal at the pleasure of the King or Queen. The King and Queen were white.
They are gone but the new Indian and African Kings have inherited the power of the British throne. Dismissal at the pleasure of the Guyana Government is the new order. I mean what I write in the last line here – I will give my life for the Velvet Revolution in Guyana right now.

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