US Senator “boycotts’ Jagdeo today in New York

Jun 24, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

‘Mr. Jagdeo is in Queens, New York where tonight at the La Guardia Hotel he will be given an award by a Guyanese association in connection with his so-called earth policy. This event was planned last month and three awardees were named including Jagdeo and US Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand.
Ms. Gillibrand, this week, was bombarded with e-mails about Mr. Jagdeo’s fascist dictatorship in Guyana. She received letters denouncing Mr. Jagdeo and requesting that she stay away from the event because her presence would lend credibility to Mr. Jagdeo.
Ms. Gillibrand was also in receipt of the dossier on extra-judicial killing handed to her by members of a Guyanese delegation that met at different times and separately with Senator Benjamin Cardin and US representative at the UN, Ms. Susan Rice. Both Cardin and Rice are in possession of the dossier.
It is highly unlikely that Ms. Gilllibrand would have just automatically adhered to the request of those American-Guyanese. She would have adopted two courses of action. One was to contact the Secretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs for a briefing on Guyana. Secondly, she would have asked her research staff to do some work on Guyana and Mr. Jagdeo. It is clear from what she was told or read that she didn’t think it would have been politically correct to sit with Mr. Jagdeo tonight.
So many times we would hear or read about the frustrations of Guyanese about lack of American action against elected fascism in Guyana.
What Guyanese have to comprehend is that the ABC countries and CARICOM are not going to act against tyranny in Guyana unless the people themselves are involved in denouncing action. It is unfair and presumptuous for any nation to commit itself to complacency, apathy and fear then tell a more powerful country; “Please come and help us.”
The obvious answer would be; “Why don’t you start to help yourself and we will join you.”
This writer posits the theory that if there was a sustained regime of “mo fyaah/slo fyaaah” from 2007 onwards when the degeneracy and immorality reached extremely nasty levels the international community would have pressured the Jagdeo cabal into a fresh round of dialogue.
Those Guyanese who cry out for American help must understand how we in this country appear in the eyes of the world. Presidents and Prime Ministers aren’t going to pay any attention to Guyana’s oligarchic regime because the politics of protest does not exist here and among Guyanese in the Diaspora.
These world leaders are going to curiously ask; “What’s happening down here, aren’t people protesting what’s going on there?”
We should be grateful and thankful to Senator Gillibrand for her pro-democratic instinct. How many of us, Guyanese are willing to do what Gillibrand, an American citizen, did for us by letting Mr. Jagdeo know that his politics is unacceptable?
My prediction is that as a reaction to the Senator’s snubbing of him, Mr. Jagdeo is going to call a huge conference at the Convention Centre, and there will be an outpouring from those stakeholders that whisper behind his back that they are glad when his term comes to an end and hope for a coalition of opposition groups to win the next election.
There is a heavy downpour of rumours about a possible unity slate to defeat the PPP at the forthcoming poll. One wonders if those politicians who want to win an election know that people vote for the opposition in a country that they know.
It is no exaggeration in stating that the people in this country do not know who their opposition leaders are, they do not see them or even here about them.
Why these politicians feel that they are the messianic ones; that once the elections are called, they will be anointed by the Guyanese people?
One is fully aware that at this stage of life in Guyana, a demobilized population appears jaded. But surely, the opposition can at least put in an appearance. Robert Corbin seems to be the smartest opposition politician around these days.
When he noticed there was a protest movement on Brickdam, he came upon the scene.
He went to the Brickdam lock-up and argued for those who were arrested. To date the AFC, GAP-ROAR, and WPA have not said a word about the confiscation of that poor man’s truck from Patentia.
My prediction is that there is going to be a massively low turn out at the next general elections. People have no admiration for those who want to become the next government. I don’t blame them.

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