Year of secrets and revelations

Jan 07, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Two contradictory characteristics enveloped the Government in 2009 – secrecy and apocalypse. We can start with secrets. We were never told who the investors were in the failed hotel venture on the Atlantic coast in Kingston that if completed would have carried the Marriott brand.
We are still to know who collected monies that were owed to them on their investments when New Building Society bought out the Berbice Bridge shares of CLICO. As the year went into its last two months, a public relations figure arrived at the Office of the President. He occupied space at the Chronicle, appeared often in the letter section of the two independent dailies, but the nation did not know his official designation.
Contracts dominated the journalism of this newspaper as it desperately sought to find out how much finance each award carried but they remain secrets buried deep in the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance and the Office of the President. The star of the surreptitious show was Julius. He is still secretly trucked away from the eyes of the public. He was in fact the star of 2009.
It has dawned on many in the media that once he reveals his hideout, he may be handsomely rewarded and the US Embassy may be pressed to release a visa that was cancelled. A certain medical doctor went the same route and his prey became the recipient of an attractive package.
The climax of secrecy occurred in a New York courtroom where a former soldier’s testimony remains tightly sealed that if ever to be released would topple a so-called democratic regime.
The revelations were equally intriguing. The nation learnt of an important, public marriage that didn’t carry the seal of the legal institution that issues it. The country was riveted with the drama that unfolded in a courtroom in New York. Three witnesses and a letter to a business manager pointed to the involvement of a Minister with a dangerous drug baron. He retains the confidence of his bosses. It is as if in Guyana, evidence no longer has factual existence.
In another courtroom in New York, a former GDF officer is given resident status after his story is believed by a judge. There is a fascinating irony in this particular denouement. We don’t know what he said to his American DEA handlers but his unknown and unseen revelation in that court by the very words of the judge has indicted the leadership of the Government of Guyana.
As the year wore on, indications were that some people wanted Mr. Jagdeo to have a third term. They started out in secrecy but within that closed closet came a melodramatic epiphany. It wasn’t the party that Mr. Jagdeo comes from that was championing a removal of term limits but some rich folks.
The guessing game began as to who were the script-writers but as the secrecy grew older, answers came tumbling out of Freedom House. The nation learnt from the mouth of the PPP boss that the erectors of a third term billboard on land owned by the Kissoon Group of Companies at Robb Street and Avenue of the Republic were no friends of the party. This was a startling discovery.
Could a citizen support Mr. Jagdeo yet be an enemy of the PPP? If the answer is yes then a chasm has opened up between party and presidency. And some curious questions came into play one of which is; “What are they getting for wanting to have Mr. Jagdeo back and is it what they are getting they could have got from the President and not the party?
Indeed the chasm was there and it grew larger as an unceremonious dismissal occurred at the Office of the President when a long-serving party apparatchik voiced denunciation
of the third-term conspiracy. The climax came in a full-page advertisement by thirteen persons who railed against the removal of the party stalwart.
More secrets came to the surface – who is behind the gang of thirteen? As 2009 drew to a close, a country far away from Guyana, in Scandinavia by the name of Denmark came up with the biggest revelation – there wasn’t to be hundreds of billions of dollars to be collected each year by poor Third World countries for their forest protection paid for by the capitalist world.
It was the worst Christmas gift one could have possibly received. All the goodies you planned to buy with the money turned into a shattered dream. One can guess that the new anthem of New Garden Street will be that famous song by its equally famous composer, Burt Bacharach, “Promises, Promises.”

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