Fantasies unfolding into tomorrow’s tragedies

Sep 08, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The first essay I wrote as a university freshman at UG was on Nazi Germany. My professor was Guyanese Catholic Nun, Sister Mary Noel Menezies. During the discussion of my essay, I told Sister Menezies that the magnitude of the atrocities committed upon the Germany people by Adolph Hitler could not have been possible without the participation at some stage, of the German people.
She answered in the affirmative but asked me; “Did they agree willingly?” She went on to explain how a cabal of repressive, ruthless leaders can drive fear into a nation.
I went on to read philosophy books on fear and I came to grips with Sister’s valuable point.
Today, I live in a country where a leader, dominated and destroyed by the inner layers of mediocrity, is driven by delusions of grandeur to the point where his failures will be celebrated at the National Stadium on September 16 in a pyrotechnical display of coruscation that masks the tragedies he has created and which will bedevil this nation for a long time to come.
Fear will be the key in the success of what Mr. Jagdeo’s acolytes have termed a Day of Appreciation. Army and police personnel will be performing. State officials will have to be there. A circus will be staged to attract a large crowd.
The irony of the entire event is that there is nothing to celebrate. The invitation to the Day of Celebration is littered with Freudian meaning. The President is addressed as Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo. This denotes the frenetic pursuit of image and credibility; qualities and possessions with which Mr. Jagdeo was never endowed.
The doctorates were honorary conferrals. The biggest participant at the Day of Appreciation will be “Comrade Irony.” What is there to appreciate about the twelve-year tenure of Mr. Jagdeo? He bows out in two months’ time. Lok at how his subjects view there own country.
There is a boast of stupendous growth; no one wants to stay in Guyana. There is a boast of economic growth, the planners of the Day of Appreciation sent out invitations at a time when our dilapidated schools are on display for newspaper readers to view with disgust.
The planners of the Day of Appreciation sent out their invitation at a time when GPL collapsed and blackout hit the city for two consecutive days. Where I live it strikes everyday.
In addition to Comrade Irony who will be the featured guest, Sigmund Freud will be the second honoured invitee. Fate plays cruel games. The Day of Appreciation is called to celebrate failures and indeed Jagdeo’s failures are ubiquitous. Deep in their Freudian minds, the key strategists that Mr. Jagdeo has worked with for so long reminded us of what Mr. Jagdeo’s rule was like. So as they put the saliva on the envelope to dispatch the invitations, we got pictures of run down schools, a broken down GPL and a mountain of Wikeleaks cables.
The cables tell a tragic and Shakespearian tale of secret corridors, dark hallways, criminal conspiracies and Mephistophelean dances where every conceivable venality was entangled in politics’ immoral and depraved debaucheries. Maybe at the Day of Appreciation, they should play the song that best depicts the tyrannical twelve years of the God, his games, schemes and ephemeral grandeurs.
If there is any song that more compellingly describes the inanities and insanities of power that have destroyed this country these past twelve years, it is the Eagles’ “Hotel California.” Here are the appropriate words;
“Mirrors on the ceilings
The pink champagne on ice
And she said
We are all prisoners here of our own device
In the master chambers
They gathered for the feast
They stabbed it with their steely knives
But they just can’t kill the beast.”
History is a priceless thing and one hopes that the independent media is there on that fateful Friday night to record the people who will enter Hotel California at the National Stadium.
Decades from now as the nation seeks to right the wrongs of Mr. Jagdeo’s legacy, we will see and know who were the participants in the nation’s tragedies. And of course the Guyanese people and history will judge them harshly.

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