The President laments: “What if it was your child?

May 16, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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President Jagdeo was in Wakenaam last week to seek support for his airstrip project on the island. President Jagdeo’s logics never fail to amaze. In justifying an airport in Wakenaam to the people who gathered in a school to listen to him, the President pointed to the possibility of an emergency, where a citizen on the island may need to be flown out without delay. It is really unbecoming of the President to continue to make statements for which he can be accused of being illogical and poor in intellectual judgement.
This is the year 2010 and more than two hundred years ago, the study of economics has provided governments, organizations and the business world with the methodology of a survey. I don’t think President Jagdeo is unaware of what is a survey. Don’t let us detain ourselves with hypothetical examples. Let us stick with the emergency logic of Mr. Jagdeo.
In a remote island like Wakenaam, an airport can be justified, according to His Excellency, because you may need to fly someone out who is in exigent need of medical treatment. While speaking, he intoned; “What happened if it was your child?”
Has it occurred to Mr. Jagdeo that there is scientific research that goes into the expenditure of huge projects? Since 1940 how many incidents have occurred in the uncivilized hour of the morning that necessitated emergency medical treatment out of Wakenaam and Leguan? I know the island very well. Can Mr. Jagdeo answer that question?
Wakenaam and Leguan are not industrial towns. They are sleepy villages where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy and by 21:00 hours people retire to bed or stay up to look at television. A minibus cannot run over a drunken rice farmer because the minibus owner hangs up his gloves long before midnight comes. These are the data Governments examine before they spend money on infrastructural projects. Mr. Jagdeo’s logics are weird. Any remote enclave in a country can suffer a midnight tragedy and emergency medical treatment is required. That can hardly justify building an airport on all remote villages in a country.
As I wrote above, I know Wakenaam well. My in-laws and all their brothers and sisters were born there and my in-law’s three children spent a large amount of their childhood there. I have umpteen cousins-in-law in Wakenaam. One of the sad things about Wakenaam is that it is slowly being depopulated. From 1998 to the present time, Wakenaam has lost over two thousand citizens.
I estimate that Wakenaam will not survive as an island in the next thirty years. People are migrating out of Wakenaam at supersonic speed. Gone are a majority of my wife’s relatives and extended relatives. Empty houses dot the landscape of Wakenaam. This writer will go so far as to say that it is unadulterated economic nonsense to put an airport on Wakenaam. Many Wakenaam residents told me there was no widespread consultation with the population, and if the residents were to choose what they want in terms of expenditure, the airstrip would be last on their list.
There can only be two reasons for the decision to put an airstrip on Wakenaam. One is that certain people know absolutely nothing about economic planning and some random thinking produced the decision. Secondly and alternatively, the Jagdeo regime has a hidden reason for wanting this project. It may have to do with something that we the citizens cannot conceptualize at the moment. My feeling is that the strip is designed to benefit a particular wealthy friend of the ruling cabal who needs air transport for whatever business he is into.
What about President Jagdeo’s lamentation of; “Suppose it is your child?” Does Mr. Jagdeo know how many poor children have died at the Georgetown Hospital? Does Mr. Jagdeo know how many young people have suffered social demobilization because of the Government’s strangulation of Critchlow Labour College? Does Mr. Jagdeo know how many children have seen their parents become victims of Government’s discrimination? What about Acting Chief Education Officer, Mrs. Whyte-Nedd? After four years of acting, she is about to retire without confirmation. She stands to lose a substantial reduction in her pension. Does Mr. Jagdeo know how her children feel? Does the President understand the pain of parents who have to send their children to UG where resources are abominably short?
Priya Manickchand has just become a parent. I guess she would now understand how children suffer when their parents become the victims of the elected dictatorship and elected fascism of a government of which she is a part.

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