A Battered Guyanese Citizen

Jul 25, 2010 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

I am a battered Guyanese Citizen. Anyone living in Guyana can understand this. Watch the newscasts, read the newspapers especially over this last week and you will understand what I’m talking about. Imagine – you pay your taxes and yet this week you’ve been drowning in garbage, mosquitoes and coughing people all around – possibly an outbreak of Dengue that they have still not told us about.
And in all of this the rain falls, the clogged drains full of plastic and low tide means even more mopping up for you. Keep the baby high if you got one, girl!
And to crown this all, if you thought your leaders were going to give you a dash of hope, you know just a little pinch, like the pinch of salt you’re putting in that pot you’re struggling to prepare each day…think again.
Watch spellbound the madness as they argue whose fault all this is and say we don’t care! The Ministers, the City Council and the Government. Don’t forget to mention Minister Lall who would prefer us all to get sick so this situation would change!
I hope you got his inference. He, his family and friends are most likely not included in this group of coughing Guyanese citizens.
If this is not madness tell me what is!
But who’s going to tell these “Leaders” we don’t give a damn who caused this, just fix the problem. That is your job. That is what you are taking my tax dollars and being paid to do!
So Mr. President who runs all of Guyana, from choosing the best colour to paint the taxis (can you believe that with all the challenges we face “our President” has to find time to discuss this too!) to the talk about the LCDS that isn’t doing anything for my reality, just pay the second quarter money to City Hall, like I had to pay mine and wave your magic wand and fix dis!
You know when someone coming to visit we can fix it then.
So moving around coughing with rotting garbage all around me, I started thinking of all the ways Guyana batters me “a proud citizen”.
Everyone’s nightmare is GPL, We face the blackouts and the bills are still high as hell. If you think you have a case, or even deserve an explanation, think again.
There is no organisation that will even listen. Don’t mention the PUC – I’ve been through that with a case that is still pending 10 years later.
Now what about parking in this dear Georgetown around busy banks. Just recently we read of the numerous occasions persons were robbed coming from the Bank. Shouldn’t someone be worried about you and me? No not necessarily! Let’s remove a few parking spaces outside Scotiabank, just so the President does not have to wait if someone is reversing in Carmichael Street. So you go park around the corner or in the back streets and hold your bag or envelope tight and pray there is no thief, while he speeds by with his security. You think you count?
And what about Parliament, we’ve spoken of this before. Close several roads and cross street so “65 of we” could meet. Force everyone to walk on a dark High Street and read about the robberies the following week. Who will rethink this?
And since when State House belongs only to the PPP. Have you noticed that every lime, party or event is a PPP treat. It is our “State House” I thought, belonging to the nation, belonging to me. I’ll wait to hear when the PNC and AFC could have a fundraiser there. “Don’t it belong to all a we?”
Or better yet, go to a function and sit waiting politely for the “big boys” to arrive. You will wait up to half an hour for some like the PM to arrive with a stride.
You think they respect you or your time.
This is the time of the “EGO” and after growing up with exercise books with Burnham’s face on the front, I realised that with all the expensive posters of the Champion of the Earth along the East Coast not much else had changed.

All Guyanese, if we’re honest we can see that life has become “nasty, brutish and short!” Cuss up is the name of the game. Please don’t tell your children to look to our leaders as role models, because “even Ashni disappointed we!”
So where is the civility, the productive debate, the promise of the dawn of a new era…a new day. Look hard at yourself Guyanese Citizen.
Understand how dis game does go. You sit and hide and pretend not to know. We are reaping all that we sow. I know you’re beaten down and there appears to be no hope, but start opening your mouth, throw away the fear, watch how you vote.
This is my Guyana too! I know I count, do you? It is time to change this!
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.
We are the ones we have been waiting for.
We are the change that we seek” – Obama