A strange land where angst overflows

Apr 27, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Do you think Robert Corbin has become strange and is not interested in fighting for people’s rights any longer and that that is a great disappointment? Well you ain’t see nutting yet. Not only Corbin has become mysterious but the entire country.
If you claim that Corbin’s behaviour is inscrutable, what do you say to the following quotes I will give below? These are the words of people that fought long and hard for rights in general for the Guyanese people but today read these words that are coming from their pens.
We start with Eusi Kwayana. I observed in one of my columns that long-standing political activist, Andaiye, was disappointing when, on receiving an honour from the business community for her contribution to Guyana, she uttered not one single word on what Guyana has become since the days she fought the Burnham regime.
She said nothing that the junta in the seventies looks like a boy scout to what we have in the PPP Government today. Up jumps the venerated, Eusi Kwayana, using harsh words in his reply to me which I ignored out of deep respect for him (see SN’s letter pages July 21, 2009).
Here is what Kwayana wrote about me; “Mr. Kissoon must know whether he wants to be seen as telling people what not to print and also what to say.”
This unphilosophical outlook coming from Kwayana must be one of the biggest mistakes in his 65-year career as a political activist. I guess Mr. Jagdeo had the heartiest laugh when he read Mr. Kwayana’s reasoning. The President must be familiar with a few criticisms of Mr. Kwayana, writing from his base in California in which Mr. Kwayana may have suggested that Mr. Jagdeo do this or to that.
Mr. Jagdeo must have asked himself, “Why is Kwayana telling me what I must do or say?” I will check the past issues of Dayclean and Mr. Kwayana’s recent missives in the Stabroek News to see if Mr. Kwayana has faulted the President for not acting on specific episodes.
I was quite taken back that Kwayana could have been energized to write by such an innocuous remark of mine directed at Andaiye.
Here, now, is another manifestation of the Kwayana approach by another WPA personnel, Nigel Westmaas. The reply is identical to Kwayana’s. Reacting to my judgement that the Stabroek News feature, “In The Diaspora,” focuses less on Guyana and more on foreign issues, Mr. Westmaas let me know that “we are not captive to Kissoon’s timing and focus.”
For Westmaas, Kissoon should dictate what subjects he and his colleagues should write on and when. Westmaas went on to state that he is the editor of Dayclean, a WPA publication. In many of its issues Dayclean demanded that President Jagdeo’s timing and focus be what the WPA would like it to be in certain areas of governance.
These two sentiments (Kwayana’s and Westmaas’s) tell the sad state of where Guyana is at the moment.
The entire country has become apathetic (I hope Benschop, Lincoln Lewis and Christopher Ram do not take objection) but we want the AFC and Robert Corbin to go out there charging like the Light Brigade. We want Corbin to lead the PNC into confrontation with the Government.
We want the AFC to mount street protests. But where is the rest of Guyana. Do you know the only case the Bar Association has filed against the Government was a done a few years back when the Government demanded that all professionals pay a license fee of $250,000.
This Government has committed more legal atrocities that the Burnham Government but the Bar Association is still to challenge them on any constitutional issue. Guyana has become a failed state where narco-traffickers are openly facilitated by men in power yet “In the Diaspora,” devoted more time to events in Honduras than this tragic land.
On a daily basis, the nastiest manifestations in bad governance occur but Kwayana can find time to chastise Frederick Kissoon on a mild criticism of Andaiye. He finds time to attack Kissoon but is yet to find time and energy to write a letter in defence of Freddie Kissoon who is visited with the vilest vilification of him and his family, not that I need Kwayana’s protection. I don’t.
This is what Guyana has become – an apathetic nation of misplaced priorities. And a monstrous government enveloped with evil continues to lead us down the road to perdition.
I’m still here Eusi, struggling for a better Guyana and speaking out. You met me in 1970. That was almost forty years ago. I’m still an independent “upstart.”

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A strange land where angst overflows

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