2009 in Guyana: Year of the US Embassy

Jan 08, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In the year just gone by, there were more political venalities, more nastiness from the corridors of power than in any calendar year of the rule of President Burnham and Hoyte of the PNC. Yet when Burnham ruled, we were in the media, on the streets, holding our placards, having vigils while the PPP opposition boycotted Parliament. We never let up in the struggle to weaken the power of the PNC. Back then, no one on Planet Earth knew the succeeding PPP would have reduced Guyana to a banana republic, more of a dangerous and tragic place than what it was under the Burnham regime.
In 2009, the miasma flowed from every conceivable corner from the corridors of power, but only the US Embassy gave us hope. And by this I mean no insult to the people who compiled the dossier on extra-judicial killings and the courage of Lincoln Lewis and Mark Benschop. It was a year where a rebellious nation full of histories of struggle just gave up. The reason for being just lifted its injured body out of the window of despair and fluttered in the Atlantic that borders our country. Last year began the way of its predecessor, 2008, when blackouts tormented Guyanese and dismissal at the pleasure of the monarch saw the end of Joseph O’Lall.
As 2008 drew to a close, the heart of David de Caires gave way, leaving Guyana one less democrat to fight elected dictatorship. The uncanny ending of 2008 and 2009 is intriguing. The Marriott Hotel crumbled on a bed of sand on the Kingston seawall as 2008 moved into history. As 2009 ebbed into its final moments of existence, the promise of billions from forest conservation floated away in the rivers of Denmark. It was Shakespeare who wrote that something was rotten in the city of Denmark. Well in 2009 a lot was rotten, both literally and figuratively, in the city of Georgetown.
If ever Mr. Burnham moved in his grave since he died in 1985, it was in 2009. Had Mr. Burnham committed a quarter of the atrocities the PPP Government perpetrated on this helpless, sheepish nation last year, we would have slept outside his home at Belfield, and invoked the witches in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, to cast a deadly spell over Burnham so he could be driven from the land.
The land in 2009 was filled with political impurities but only the US Embassy came to our rescue.
Would we have remained silent if Burnham had secretly polygraphed senior public servants then banished them? Last year we became the only county in the world to dismiss civil servants based on polygraph failings. Where was the evidence of guilt?
In the midst of this virtual assault on legal rights, calls for the test to be administered to the Cabinet was dismissed by the political elites with hubris and hateur characteristic of the European dictators of the 1930s. Given this latitude do what it wants, the political elites used the Parliament to deepen its dictatorial hold on the nation. The Trade Union Recognition Act was emasculated last year to impoverish the TUC and elevate a caricature named FITUG. A brazen move was successful when the Constitution was tossed aside and the life of the ERC prolonged.
The nation learnt that the Canadian Refugee Board gave residency status to a fourteen-year-old girl who was raped in a well known business place on the East Bank of Demerara, because had she returned to Guyana, her life would have been in danger. The population read about it, and went about its business. Political society said nothing.
Last year was punctuated with fear, silence and inexplicabilities. As the exercise of power became more demonic, more abominable, the society became even more reticent. Not a voice was lifted in support of crying mothers whose children were suddenly expelled from a private school for the mere possession of a cell phone. I asked Christopher Ram to explain how a freedom fighter like Andaiye can receive an award from the private sector at an official function and not even in passing make a minute reference to the degeneracy of power that exceeds the Burnham regime that she endangered her life fighting against.
It was a terrible year for courage. A column in the Stabroek News titled “In the Diaspora,” written by Guyanese abroad showed more concern for the people of Honduras than the suffering people of Guyana. It was the US Embassy in Georgetown that provided the only glimmer of hope in 2009. It acted against a child molester who occupies a position of importance in the corridors of power.

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