Politically prostituting the tragedy of Neesa Gopaul

Oct 11, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I read Mr. Ravi Dev’s piece on the Neesa Gopaul tragedy in yesterday’s issue of KN. Nothing Dev writes shocks me. It doesn’t because over the years he has outlined and established his cultural ideologies and has applied them to Guyana. Mr. Dev is not the first and will not be the last citizen who will see Guyana’s future through the prism of ethnic hegemony.
In his column, Mr. Dev lamented the loss of moral signposts in Guyana that eventually led us to the tragedy of Neesa Gopaul. He dates it from the seventies. Let’s quote him; “The sordid tale around Neesa…is merely the dénouement of the degradation that has come to typify Guyanese life since the seventies.” He further wrote; “After our economy disintegrated, many excused our descent into immorality….”
It is so unfortunate that people in this country, supportive of either the PPP or ethnic causes, could see a connection between the bestial, inhuman methods that went into the murder of Neesa Gopaul with the state of politics and economy forty years ago.
Their objective is to blame the PNC. This is powerful propaganda coming in the midst of an election campaign. They are trying to convince the Guyanese people that the malignancy and social sarcoma that are devouring this country go back to when the PNC ruled.
Nowhere in Mr. Dev’s subtle and not so subtle castigations, he points to a connection between the complete breakdown in moral fortitude and ethical behaviour among those we look to for moral guidance and the death of Neesa Gopaul. Could any thesis of Mr. Dev hold up to rigorous intellectual scrutiny? Even if we argue that the society began to fall apart in the seventies, there were discontinuities since the death of Burnham. The Hoyte administration tried to pull things back. A Burnhamite leader of a goon squad was prosecuted and jailed. A leading serving PNC Minister was arrested and charged.
In the midst of the attempted Renaissance by Hoyte, the PNC lost the 1992 elections. Mr. Dev pays no attention to the connection between the disappearance of Guyana’s moral compass and the expanding levels of uncivilized brutalization that unbridled, naked power and its immoral usage brought since 2000.
This writer lived under the authoritarian insanity of the Burnham years. Things fell apart alright. Naked power was exercised alright, But there were moral lines that were never crossed and it is this analyst’s belief that given the middle class upbringing of the leadership of the PNC in the seventies, those lines would not have been traversed.
Since 2000, nothing is sacred, honourable, and worth saving in the eyes of the present regime. The worst types of venalities are tolerated and moral vices are never ever given any attention. Under the present cabal that supervises the nation’s business, there are no criteria for judging moral repugnancy and political nastiness. The result is a complete breakdown of Guyanese society. Mr. Dev has his political reasons for not wanting to see a connection between the death of Neesa Gopaul and the nature of our Government but the facts are larger than the Atlantic Ocean which is our neighbor.
Is there no connection between the dissolution of moral laws and the treatment of the alleged mistreatment of Ms. Varshnie Singh by the President of the country? Is there no link between the loss of respect among our people for our Government and the way a certain Minister nicknamed “Killaman” behaved in the recent past and is treated as an untouchable by his Government? Can’t the same question be asked of the presidential advisor that brawled on the ground at an international boxing match and illegally exported wildlife.
And like “Killaman” remains an untouchable? What message is sent to our young population when a Permanent Secretary has been discovered by the GRA of signing over fifty bogus duty free letters and he remains on the job? What about the public law officer who told the nation, he is open to committing illegal acts?
Isn’t there a huge nexus between the breakdown that can result in murders like the Neesa Gopaul and a certain political prince who obliges the mother of a 14 year old girl to take her to her home but ended up with her at his house where sexual penetration was forcefully achieved?
But most of all, we are witnessing the collapse of Guyana, when in 2000 drug barons were allowed a taste of power in exchange for fighting the gunmen in Buxton. Neesa Gopaul is a victim of the debauched, decadent, violent culture that such a relationship brought to the Guyanese society.

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Politically prostituting the tragedy of Neesa Gopaul

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