A grieving mother cries out for light

Sep 17, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

As a commentator you get constant feedback on what you write. I did not make any written annotation on the responses I got over the two decades that I have functioned as a social analyst with the Catholic Standard, the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News. I regret I haven’t done that, because it means I cannot identify which among the thousands of columns I have written that mostly intrigued readers. Last week, there were many congratulations on my rebuttal of the official address to returning Guyanese graduates in which they were told that a section of the private media wants to destroy their future.
Many persons I have spoken to were satisfied that I have done three responses to that miserable address because they felt it was the Government itself that has taken away the future of young people in this land. It is customary for people to approach you with suggestions of what to include in your rebuttals. Yesterday, I was asked to do yet another commentary on that address. I was told that in the light of the cry for street lights by the mother of the young lady who died while trying to retrieve her stolen Blackberry, another viewpoint should be given on the dreadful future that awaits the people of this country, especially the younger folks.
I thought this was indeed an elegant suggestion – the desperate appeal by Sheema Mangar’s mother for street lights at the junction where her daughter tragically lost her life, and the exalted claim by the little dictators that they have provided a future for young people in Guyana. It is in fact a trenchant contradiction – a week after telling graduates that everything is rosy in their country and that a section of the private media is out to ruin their future, the mother of a murdered victim cried out that there should be street lights where her daughter was murdered, implying that if there were lights, maybe her daughter would still be alive.
The mother’s point is taken. Although there is no guarantee that a street light would prevent a violent robbery, at least there is the deterrence factor. This is commonsense. A guard may not stop a burglary but it might very well do so since the robber knows that there is someone guarding the facility. I know the crucial role a lamp on a pole can play. I had parked my car directly at the junction of North Road and Light Street under the roof of Jiffy Lubes auto repair store to go to Nigel’s Supermarket at Robb and Light Streets. It was dark. The street lamp above was not working. So this guy crept up in the dark and threw a miasmic substance on me as I entered my car and was about to use the ignition. If the beam of that lamp was shining down, maybe he would have been afraid of being spotted.
But back to street lights and the so-called future that the little dictators want Guyanese to believe they will provide them with. From all appearances, this country has the complexion of a failed state (oh, just in case you forgot, remember Randy Persaud, before he fled, argued that Guyana did not meet the criteria of a failed state, but Dr. Alissa Trotz embarrassed him by proving that in the delineation of the criteria, Guyana is classified as a partially failed state). Yesterday, I toured Regent Street to buy a water cooler. It is a sickening sight.
This country is indeed a collapsed nation. From New Garden Street onwards, the grass in the southern gutter of Regent Street has grown out of control. As you walk out of the store, the picture of a failed state stares at you. When you look at the state of that gutter, you say that you cannot be on one of the main shopping avenues in downtown Georgetown. I watched at that wretched scene and I said to myself that this country is certainly one without a future.
Who does this Government think it is fooling when its leading members preach about development and progress? The sight of the alleyways makes you think that you are on some faraway part of a hidden, untouched jungle. I do not want to keep President Jagdeo in focus in my articles all the time, but I truly cannot help in commenting on the way he thinks. What is going on in Mr. Jagdeo’s mind when he sees the jungle Georgetown has become knowing that he received a UN award for preservation of the environment?

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A grieving mother cries out for light

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