Fine, courageous Guyanese women at the junction at this juncture

Aug 21, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

During the industrial dispute at UG in February, I was entering the television studio to record an interview with Christopher Ram while Raphael Trotman was leaving. Trotman recalled an incident at the University of the West Indies in little, conservative Barbados where a lecturer was dismissed and the entire student population rose up in demonstrative anger. In little Barbados, you can find university professors writing letters to the press on social and political issues. Not so in Guyana.
In the rest of the world, the population shows anger and engages in vigorous protest when little violations occur. In Guyana, the nastiest transgression by the government is just thrown onto the face of the citizens and they take their sanitary napkins and wipe off the insult. No one is going to stay in this country because no one can believe that a government can be so cruel, selfish and insensitive, and is allowed to do as they want. Something is wrong with Guyana for which science and knowledge have no explanation.
I am a trained social scientist and no great professor from Oxford or Harvard or the Sorbonne can convince me otherwise that Guyana’s authoritarian system under Mr. Jagdeo reached the terrible stage of utter dictatorship, because after one horror show was allowed to pass, Mr. Jagdeo kept testing the waters. He went further and further and did and did until Mr. Jagdeo felt that he was so all-powerful that he could invent any insult or thrust upon Guyana any oppressive policy and not one damn thing would happen.
He did so and not one damn thing happened. It is this columnist’s enlightened opinion (yes I think it is based on what I know of politics) that if the opposition PNC had confronted Mr. Jagdeo and read the Riot Act to him, Mr. Jagdeo would have stopped. Someone told me that there was a gathering at New Thriving Restaurant where President Jagdeo had a group of Ministers with him and the issue of the Public Service Union came up with respect to some policy the State was about to implement in relation to the traditional public service. A Cabinet Minister who is connected to a lending institution and who should know about who got back their money from CLICO, shouted, “The PSU can’t do anything, I already cripple them.”
However lost we think we are in this land, there are the courageous few that will save this country. On August 15, a group of Guyanese women decided on their own that they will set up camp directly opposite Parliament on High Street at the junction with Brickdam on the park built there, on what was formerly the Statistical Bureau building, to highlight the plight of the Linden people. They called it the People’s Parliament and it goes around the clock – 24 hours. The banners are up and the placards are there to be read.
These lovely, brave women put up two tents to shield the participants from the tropical heat. But the Brickdam police came and dismantled them and illegally confiscated the tents. From 5pm on Wednesday, August 15, the People’s Parliament began its life. It is totally heart-warming to see how these women, with support from some strong anti-dictatorship men, have instilled hope and valour in this nation. Of course the big-wigs stayed away. These are our opposition parliamentarians (with the exception of Desmond Trotman of the WPA) who have not seen it fit to at least put in a fleeting appearance. The churchmen, the lawyers, doctors, UG academics and other civil society branches have failed to turn up (the exception being attorney Nadia Sagar of Transparency Institute)
Interesting to note; not one opposition lawyer inquired from the organizers about their interest in going to the courts for an injunction against the police. I asked a close lawyer friend to file the injunction but he said he had relatives in the country and therefore would not be working. At the time of writing I am pursuing the injunction angle but the women themselves will journey to Brickdam to argue for their tents.
In most countries if that all-day, all-night vigil was on, mainstream opposition leaders would have participated. But not in Guyana. You have to be with these women to see their indomitable spirit. On Friday evening, the police sent two intelligence officers. Women of course. I spotted them immediately. We took their photographs. They knew we outed them, so they aren’t coming back. All Guyanese must salute these women at this critical juncture of Guyana’s political evolution for their boundless energy and fantastic courage.

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