Rent a dream, rent a professor, rent a killer

Aug 07, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A strange (I wanted to say funny but that sounds insulting) item appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Stabroek News. A group of rich young people in their early twenties (some from extremely wealthy backgrounds) formed a group named Grant-A-Dream. This youthful endeavour is a volunteer entity designed, according to its press release, to make Guyana a better place to live.
As you read on, you will be disappointed, because it would appear that these young minds only understand the material dimensions of life. All the tasks they will assign themselves are in the area of physical contributions. Not one word was uttered about making Guyana a better place to live in by transforming the moral mess the nation is drowning in. Long ago, about thirty-five years or more, the great Walter Rodney once remarked that whereas the youths of the world are energized people with a philosophical agenda, Guyanese young people were far behind.
As you read who these young people are, you get a sense that they want to stay very far from political transformation values. Some of them seem to be very close to the political establishment. And the present political establishment has contributed to the moral mess we are in. I think some of them went to the same high school with my daughter and I wasn’t surprised when, as I read on, it was stated that a number of them were in foreign universities.
Now this is interesting. When you look at their age, if they are in foreign universities then they are doing their first degree. Why not do it at the University of Guyana? If you so love your country, why are you in a university in another land when your own university has hundreds of programmes to choose from? Why not make Guyana a better place by helping UG, so their fellow youths could get a proper tertiary education? Don’t ask me; I’ll tell you right away – my daughter goes to UG.
One should advise these super-rich kids that they should rename their organization Rent-A-Dream, meaning they should provide the space for other young minds to rent a dream, pay no interest for it, and let the dream make them free in their own country. The Rent-A-Dream organization can begin by embracing moral change in their country. Rent-A-Dream should indeed pitch in to make Guyana a better place by asserting the right of young people to be free from political and police harassment.
The Grant-A-Dream or Rent-A-Dream group should begin their activities in the moral realm by urging their politicians to treat their wives with respect, by exercising power in the way Barack Obama does and Nelson Mandela did. Grant-A-Dream or Rent-A-Dream should use their money to teach the youthful generation that their country can only be a better place when freedom and liberties are allowed to flourish.
But most of all, Grant-A-Dream or Rent-A-Dream should do the honest, decent thing and tell Guyanese that when they were outside studying at their foreign universities, they saw what Walter Rodney referred to as energized youths. Young people all over the globe are standing up and demanding moral values from their country’s leadership, Grant-A-Dream or Rent-A-Dream should start in that direction.
As we are on the topic of renting, it is appropriate to mention that Dr. Roger Luncheon threw scorn on the visiting political theorist that the US Embassy brought down here to conduct a few lecturers on democracy two weeks ago. A professor who graduated from Harvard with his doctorate, Luncheon deemed the US Embassy effort, rent-a-professor. And why was it a rent-a-professor story? Because the political establishment didn’t like what the professor had to say about democracy in Guyana.
This is where Grant-A-Dream or Rent-A-Dream comes in. Young people in that organization need to discuss these kinds of aberrations, like the one that came out of the mouth of Dr. Luncheon. It makes Guyana look foolish and asinine in the eyes of the world. Maybe that very professor taught some of the leaders in Grant-A-Dream or Rent-A-Dream. No discussion of renting anything in Guyana can be complete without mention of the ease in which you can rent a killer.
Now don’t tell me that Grant-A-Dream or Rent-A-Dream does not know about the rent-a-killer culture in Guyana. Surely, they must have read about the entire saga of Roger Khan and the spy equipment. But of all, all Guyanese know that this is a country where murderers ride away with impunity after they are hired for the job of murdering their victims. If anything is known in Guyana, it is that those with money can easily rent a killer.

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Rent a dream, rent a professor, rent a killer

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