Two tiny specks from Mr. Jagdeo’s failed landscape

Sep 22, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Surely, one’s admiration of a retiring head of nation must be based on a list of substantial achievements. You will not be taken seriously if you are going to cite a new police station or a new school. These are routine matters that occur in not most, but all countries in the world.
It doesn’t say much for a president who tells his/her supporters that the accomplishments include a new school, more streets lights etc. Surely, commonsense dictates that when we judge an outgoing leader, there has to be a good or reasonable balance sheet of significant, and perhaps, everlasting consummation.
It is this writer’s position that Mr. Jagdeo has a pathetic track record that cannot stand up to rigorous examination. I am not going to tackle economic and social failure as yet. For now I want to look at just a tiny speck of Mr. Jagdeo’s corrugated, convoluted, corrupted landscape.
From the time the Berbice Bridge was completed, I used it as a large symbol of Mr. Jagdeo’s abysmal failure as a president.
All Guyanese, including this writer, will benefit or has benefited from the erection of that structure. That has never been my point. My point is time and money. Look at the bridge in the year it was built; then make the comparison with what exists in the entire world and you see the collapse of Mr. Jagdeo’s legacy.
For me, the issue has never been the usefulness of the bridge. The supporters of Mr. Jagdeo gloats on the structure’s value given the hassles we endured with the ferry. But as a nation that lives in the 21st century all Guyanese must ask themselves if that is all that we could have afforded in the 21st century.
President Forbes Burnham gave us the Demerara Harbour Bridge. Be honest and make the comparison with its Berbician counterpart. Forget about Jagdeo and Burnham and who they were and which one you like. Just make the comparison. The Demerara Harbour Bridge was built in the seventies. It has a walkway. Lovers, joggers and other citizens use of it every minute of the day. I use to jog with Winston Murray on the bridge and got to know his thinking.
It is a romantic escapade to be on the walkway in the evening with the one you love. The moon bathes the river and the reflections of the stars dance on the water and love thickens the air.
What has Jagdeo put in Berbice? Again, I say just make the comparison. And don’t forget, Jagdeo gave us the Berbice Bridge just three years ago. Was that bare facility all the Guyana economy could have afforded? I will repeat what I have written three times in previous columns.
When the bridge was officially opened, the Guyana Times ran a supplement on the waterway and on bridge-building in the world. What could not have escaped the eyes of even a schoolboy was the conspicuous absence of photographs of other bridges. It was a diplomatic admission that Guyana’s installation was cheap and unaesthetic.
How ironic that the great leader has given us an ugly, cheap crossing over the Berbice River
I will end with one more, tiny speck of the great leader’s landscape. This newspaper cited the owner of Guyana Times being the President. Though I don’t have the proof, I would say that the newspaper must know what it is talking about.
But this I know, President Jagdeo, Mr. Robert Persaud and Dr. Leslie Ramsammy had a lot of connections with the newspaper at the time it was being formed. I know two persons were interviewed for jobs by a particular minister.
Mr. Jagdeo saw Guyana Times as being the successful competitor to the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News. The press was state of the art, the pages were in colour and larger, the salaries were high. But Mr. Jagdeo’s invention was a failure. The Guyana Times never got off the ground. No one buys the Guyana Times.
As the afternoon drifts into the evening clouds, a van goes around Demerara sharing out Mr. Jagdeo’s “Beacon of Truth.” The Guyana Times may be the ‘Beacon of Truth” as its masthead boldly proclaims. But the truth that the Guyana Times hides is that it doesn’t sell at all. Mr. Jagdeo’s didn’t achieve success with his paper.
The story of the stultification of the Guyana Times and the ugly, cheap bridge in Berbice is the story of Mr. Jagdeo’s blighted legacy. When you move on to the bigger picture, the bigger is the total failure of the great leader. That picture is coming soon!

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Two tiny specks from Mr. Jagdeo’s failed landscape

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