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The youths of Guyana: Who should they respect?

Jan 17, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There has sprung up a very vibrant youth movement, “Youth Coalition for Transformation.” This group has kept the torch of street protest burning. One hopes that the flames are never extinguished. This must be the only country in the world that once you take to the roadways to demonstrate against the State’s abuse of power, conventional stakeholders jump out of bed, open their windows and demand that the protestors go home because street protest is a bad thing.
When you examine the window-openers, they are people with their own conspiratorial connections to state power, who benefit from state power, and hope to benefit from state power or support state power for racial reasons. The converse side of this is that the window-openers when they look at who the protestors are, their stereotypical minds begin to roam all over the land. They don’t want those types on the streets. They prefer to see nicely dressed women remonstrating with the Government on domestic abuse or church people singing hymns denouncing abortion and casino gambling.
The window-openers fear the street protestors because the denouncing of human rights violations may eventually lead to inclusive governance; that they fear more than Norman Bates.
The youths have awakened. In an era of minority government, they are not going to go away. They are going to stay because they are searching for standards and values that they expected to see in our elder public personalities, the ones that their parents taught them to respect, to look up to, to admire, to emulate.
The November 2011 elections have shattered that long-held image. The youths that are marching in the tropical sun in downtown Georgetown and raising their voices in the tropical evening at Stabroek Market Square are looking for their own values after what the November 28 elections showed them.
Our youths grew up with the recognition of Ian Mc Donald as one of our leading literary figures and a national poet. His entire life this man expressed his knowledge in literature. Then suddenly he found time to comment on politics. Just before the elections, he told his readers that Cheddi Jagan was a genius without submitting even a modicum of supporting facts.
For some unknown reason, Mc Donald had nothing to say about Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, Walter Rodney, Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte. Did race have anything to do with their non-genius? Anyway, in the midst of a swirling national controversy over the 2011 elections, Mc Donald pronounced on the integrity of the poll. Next is the perennial propagandist of the PPP, Barbados-based Guyanese Rickey Singh. Why do you say to young people of Guyana when the Stabroek News refers to this man as the doyen of Caribbean journalism and UWI gave him an honorary doctorate? This barefaced endorser of PPP racism in his own country has shamelessly written that APNU and AFC are doing an injustice to Guyana by not observing the tradition of allowing the majority party in Parliament to nominate the Speaker. He wanted Mr. Ralph Ramkarran to have the job.
Next is Dr. Steve Surujbally. The youth picketed his home. He was defiant. He gave an interview to this newspaper in which he said he was unapologetic about consulting “commercial leaders” about the election results? And who was he talking about? Certainly not people with whom the youths were enarmoured – Ramesh Dookoo and Gerry Gouveia.
What a method to use to appease the youths who were marching for explanations of the elections results. Surujbally could have at least said he was willing to talk to youth leaders too.
As we go through the list, it tells a sad tale of an older generation that failed our young population. The 2011 election was the last nail in the coffin.

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