The Poseidon, the dead society and the morning after

Mar 07, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Movies, like books, people, places and events, can have an early effect on you. I was young when I saw the Poseidon Adventure with Gene Hackman. Hackman played the role of the priest on a cruise ship that ran into turbulent waters and was sinking. Though he was a priest, he was cynical about the way God operated. He couldn’t understand why God, if he is omnipotent, allowed cruel suffering as what he saw as the ship went down.
The theme song for the movie became a worldwide hit. Titled, “the Morning After,” this song is manifestly relevant to what is taking place in this land. To understand how pertinent the lyrics are to this dead society, a few lines should be offered;
“There’s got to be a morning after
If we can hold on through the night
We have a chance to find the sunshine
Let’s keeping on looking for the light”
The focus should be on the last line (let’s keep on looking for the light).
In Guyana, no one is interested in finding tomorrow. This is a lifeless country. Is there another nation on earth where there is absolutely no political agitation, no political protest, no open, public denunciation of the quotidian violations of the rulers that are destroying this land? What is taking place here is bizarre, macabre and pessimistically dangerous. There is no life in the society from which energy and anger can emerge to confront some of the cruelest policies a government can perpetuate on its subjects.
Many years ago, the Government of Guyana broke the social contract in the most barefaced way yet the subjects refuse to recall its Leviathans.
It is not just a section of the country. The spirit of decay has enveloped this entire territory. We tend to focus on the opposition. We ask where they are. Take the University of Guyana. From early Greek times three thousand years ago, the perception has been since then that academia is the place where one inevitably finds the instinct to question the wrong use of power. This writer maintains that there is no other university in this wide world where the ambience is as silent as the sound of a cemetery at night as UG is.
Take the Bar Association. Where are these people? Aren’t these the people that ought to use the avenue of the law to make elected dictatorship accountable? How many times has the Bar Association taken the little dictators to court? Lawyers can hold a demonstration. I grew up in this country seeing them do that against the PNC Government. What is so scary about the PPP Government?
Where is the trade union movement? We know that the Government split them apart. But vibrant trade unionists still live in this country and they fought the Burnham Government. Are they afraid of the Jagdeo presidency?
It is degrading to all Guyanese to see the two solitary figures of Norris Witter and Lincoln Lewis taking to the streets with their placards. As you watch them denounce elected dictatorship in Guyana, the obvious question comes to mind – is this what the TUC has become? A two-man army? Where is the Guyana Consumer Affairs? Where are professional classes that so harassed Burnham? Where are the church leaders who stood so bravely and defied President Burnham? Why are we so intimidated by a regime that has exceeded the depravities, bestialities, venalities, cruelties and immoralities of the Forbes Burnham administration?
I ran into an old friend I haven’t seen in years last Thursday in a downtown store, Kampta Karran, who is quite known among the teaching community and the reading public. Kampta, with a huge smile on his face (which I couldn’t understand) said to me; “They have made the PNC look good.” And he kept on laughing. It happens like this sometimes. You sublimate your anger by looking at dictatorship in Guyana in a laughable way. Kampta Karran is not the only one who smiled and laughed when he made the comparison, many have done that while discussing that comparison with me.
As I was leaving, I warned Kampta that if these people get back into power come the next general election, the tyranny is going to be fascist in nature. I suspect the private media will be destroyed. The AFC will be attacked. The TUC will be done away with. The judiciary will be reduced to a foot cloth and the law will be a plaything in the hands of the little dictators. If we do not start looking for the morning after right this minute, Guyana will sink deeper in the ocean than the Poseidon.

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The Poseidon, the dead society and the morning after

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