Should I break with tradition in this Christmas issue?

Dec 25, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have been a newspaper commentator since 1988. I have done a Christmas article every year since then in the Stabroek News, Catholic Standard and the Kaieteur News. There has been no break in the tradition. Maybe this year I should move away from that. Heavy on my mind is the fact that we must have Christmas in 2011 with the PPP Government back in power. And the song is still the same. This party does not know how to even attempt to be competent.
On December 22, at 7a.m. I was typing my December 23 KN article when blackout came. My daughter had an exam and had to press her dress. The lights came back twelve hours later. I am typing this Christmas column on the night of December 22, because the editors say it is required on this date since sections of this Christmas issue will be printed on December 23. It means then that we are quite likely to get blackouts on December 23 and December 24.
When the outage came I was overtaken with anger. I called the Chief Executive Officer of GPL. I was informed that he was out of the country. I spoke with Ms. Benn, the secretary of the deputy CEO, Mr. Ash Deonarine. My request to speak to Mr. Deonarine was not granted because she said he was at a meeting.
It can only be depressing to any human being in a country that three days before Christmas, you suffer twelve hours of blackout.
It would be dishonest in the most reprehensible way if I were to avoid the subject of the national election that concluded just about a month ago. My feeling is that Guyana deserved better after 19 years of graphic misrule by the ruling party. What can be more disheartening than to see the return of the same organization that gave us electricity disruptions since 1992 and three days before Christmas 2011, we are getting not a minor outage of an hour, but twelve hours of interruption.
How can this Christmas be an enjoyable one?
My anticipation was that this season would have been a phenomenal one, because we would have had our first attempt at a national government. My prediction was that the election results would have landed the three major parties close to each other in the mid thirty per cent. I thought it would have been something like APNU 35, AFC 34, PPP 31, with slight variation for all three of them.
Given this configuration, it would have been obligatory on all the parties to try their hand at an all-party government.
It would have been a fantastic Christmas gift for the Guyanese people if the intense rivalry over the past sixty years would have been finally sidelined for the common good. So we are back to square one for Christmas 2011. For this reason, I feel I should break with my journalistic tradition and focus more on political and social issues leading up to the season rather than write on Christmas itself.
What is there to say about Christmas this year that has not been said by me since 1988? Overshadowing this Christmas for me, to repeat myself, were the election results. But all is not lost. I suspect that over half of the population has breathed a sigh of relief that there could be a meeting of minds between the three major political parties and that should make for mental tranquility this year on December 25. Of course, I am referring to the final shape of Parliament.
As referred to above, this article was submitted on December 22 so I could not write on what I saw on December 23 and 24 in Georgetown. But for me it is just that same old line – huge schools of shoppers that have deluged downtown Georgetown but the economy does not allow for massive spending. Every year, the salary increase is the same –between seven and eight percent. Does that allow for prodigious purchases? Isn’t the pattern the same? But there is an eerie difference this year.
From the same time last year, there has been a proliferation of heavily expensive retail stores specializing in luxury goods. And it is not just three or four but plenty of them. Who are the patrons of these stores in a Third World economy that is listed as one of the world’s poorest and the second poorest in CARICOM?
For me this Christmas remains the same like last year – there are just too many impoverished souls in this country to enjoy all that Christmas has to offer. Anyway, a splendid season to all my readers.

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Should I break with tradition in this Christmas issue?

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