When last have you seen a movie?

Feb 26, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

All around us, either when we are watching a movie at home, or looking at the news on television, or reading a magazine, we see the primitive conditions in this country when we look at how modern other nations are. And it is getting worse with every passing day.
I was watching a movie the other night and I saw this lady visiting the cemetery to put flowers at her mom’s gravesite. Immediately I thought of how the Le Repentir cemetery has been lost to this nation.
No citizen of this country that accepts that he/she is a human being could be unmoved at what the Le Repentir burial ground has become. We can pick a million (make that a billion) reasons why we should vote out of office the political party that has governed this country for almost two decades but the uncivilized state of Le Repentir must be one of them.
Most human beings, at one time or the other, feel the urge to go to the graveside of their loved ones and contemplate their memories. Herein lies the person we loved so much when he/she was alive.
In today’s Guyana, the Le Repentir cemetery is a huge reminder to the population of Guyana that we have become an extinct territory. I have to see this tragedy everyday where I live. The Olympic swimming pool is just down the road from my home. As I pass it each day, thoughts of Le Repentir run through my mind.
The Jagdeo Government can find money to build this structure that less than two percent of the population will utilize but we cannot save the national cemetery.
Contextually, I am not against the creation of the pool. I wasn’t against the hosting of Carifesta.
The point is, these are/were not priority issues when you examine the gargantuan needs of Guyana. It must have been close to a billion dollars (maybe more since we don’t have the figures; they are not available) to put on Carifesta. Could this poor country have afforded that when Georgetown is in disrepair, when Le Repentir is in a horrible condition, when most of our streets in the capital need repairing, when the major roadways in Georgetown are without lamps, when many villages not far from Georgetown are still without potable water, when a majority of our rural schools do not have indoor washrooms, when a majority of our school nation-wide do not have adequate furniture?
No word more describes the holding of a summit of South American leaders here last year than the term, “indecent.” A poor country that continuously begs the international financial institutions for financial assistance spent hundreds of millions of dollars to entertain a few South American presidents. The simple question was,”Could we afford it?” The simple answer is no.
A few years back, we held another South American summit for Mercosur countries. What were the benefits to this nation? Our economy hardly grows. Guysuco has collapsed. The GPL limps along. Our infrastructure can hardly be described as modern.
After forty years of Independence, the post-colonial world still hasn’t eradicated the deadly effects of colonial brain-washing. Messrs Jagdeo in Guyana and Manning in Trinidad and the Arab leaders are pathetic examples of the tragedy of colonialism. Manning spent hundreds of millions of America dollars on summits. His country’s only resource is oil? The oil kingdoms of the Arab world have literally drained the treasuries of the western world.
The transfer of money from the western countries to the Arab world for the purchase of oil has been in the trillions of dollars.
Where has this money gone to in the Arab world? Gaddafi’s nine children spend it. One of Gaddafi’s sons, celebrating his birthday on a Caribbean island, paid singer Mariah Carey one million American dollars to sing four songs.
The next year, it was Beyonce’s turn. She collected two million for five songs. Nowhere in the Arab world has the oil money been used for manufacturing. They get trillions of dollars from the West. The West gets it back in the purchase of arms and manufactured goods.
After forty-five years of Independence in Guyana, the city’s drainage is in a worse condition than in the sixties. A day of unusual rain brings flooding of downtown stores. I don’t feel sorry for these investors.
For the nineteen years of PPP’s misrule, they have uttered not one single word against bad governance, incompetent governance, dangerous governance, racist governance, corrupt governance. The French have a saying; “People deserve the government they get.”

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