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Is Mr. Gill a gillyganpus?

Mar 20, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
I reply to Harry Gill’s letter in Kaieteur News of Wednesday, March 16 (“Freddie Kissoon is a fox.”) in which he wrote that I have made an idiot of myself. According to Harry, I am a fox and an idiot. I thought he would have referred to me as a gillyganpus. I will take the liberty of labeling him as such. Let me avoid definitions because Harry says I am the only one interested in them. I will leave it to Harry to consult the dictionary on “gillyganpus” just as he did with “bennettitaceous.”
Harry Gill’s picture of development in Berbice is an illusion in his mind. Where are the developments? A small UG campus? A failing Skeldon Sugar Factory? If you want to see the bankruptcy of the PPP Government then take a look at the Berbice Bridge. I put up a challenge to Harry Gill.
Let him show me an uglier bridge built in the 21st century in any country and I will cease this column immediately. Mr. Gill is a friend of the publisher of this newspaper and he can ask him to demand that I live up to my pledge.
Once he produces the photograph of a water-span in any other country erected after the year 2000 that is as bare as the ridiculous one that sits over the Berbice River, I will stop writing period!
I challenge Gill. I go further and say Gill can never, I repeat, never accept the duel, because even the Guyana Times, which has an overlapping relation with the Office of the President couldn’t come to the rescue of Mr. Jagdeo. When the structure was officially opened, the Times ran a supplement on it. But there wasn’t one single photograph of another bridge in the world. The Guyana Times, in my opinion, did that deliberately. It could not publish the image of another maritime steel building over a waterway because the reader would have seen the comparison and would have noticed how bare and ugly the Berbice Bridge is.
Harry Gill lives in New York and no doubt he travels. Can he kindly grace the pages of this newspaper with a photograph of a bridge he has seen that is less pleasing than the one we have on the Berbice River? I would say, without fear of contradiction, that the horrible, unmodern Berbice Bridge is the most graphic evidence to date that Mr. Jagdeo has failed as a president. It is a huge reminder of his fictional legacy
The story of this construction reveals the sad failures of Mr. Jagdeo’s presidency. He couldn’t find an investor. It took two years before the money was raised right here in Guyana with NIS funds. CLICO chipped in and NBS too. And of course NBS is headed by the PS in Mr. Jagdeo’s office.
This explains why the bridge is so terribly bare. Last minute rush to get funds meant the bridge could only have contained the minimum. Compare Burnham’s Demerara construction at Peter’s Hal with Mr. Jagdeo’s on Berbice. Which is nicer?
Mr. Burnham didn’t have access to newer and innovative architecture. His edifice was done at the beginning of the seventies. Mr. Jagdeo built his about 40 years after and it appears that the engineers didn’t consult an architect. And if they did, the architect read from a book that was long out dated or got his idea from the famous movie, “Bridge on the River Kwai. The Berbice structure is the identical stuff armies of great powers erect when they are at war
Is this what Harry calls development? When Harry is in Berbice this week (as he says), let him skip over to Suriname and he will see what bridge-building over waterways is. He will see the aesthetics in bridge-building. The Jules Wijdenbosch Bridge was completed in 2000 and is a wonderful sight. As far as my knowledge goes the latest construction was the Oresund Bridge that connects Denmark and Sweden. That too was completed in 2000. Now that is a phenomenal beauty
It is downright shameful in the year 2009 for a nation to erect that bare necessity that sits on the Berbice River. All Guyanese are grateful for the removal of the ferry hassle including this columnist. But we as a nation deserved better in the 21st century
Harry Gill has to be blind not to see what a ghost town Berbice has become. Last year I was in Berbice with my fellow trade unionist at UG, Khemraj Narine and former student leader at UG, Jason Benjamin. From the time we hit East Berbice we began counting how many abandoned homes they were. I did a column the next day on what we found. Every eighth house in Berbice is deserted. Harry’s harlequinade is lemonade. Try again, Harry!
Frederick Kissoon

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