My cri de coeur

Aug 28, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Each day, I hold back the anger. I love my fellow Guyanese. I know they are good people. But the distress and indignation of their acceptance of their daily humiliation tears your heart apart. In the end you have to get on with your life. But surely, no country should put up with so much social and political mess from its government.
In the rising conflict in Linden, there was a secret joke among us who were from Georgetown. We knew it was a joke, but we cared for the Linden people and couldn’t tell them what was going on in Georgetown. Lindeners seriously believed that Georgetown would have created protest and demonstration to keep faith with them. It didn’t happen. Lindeners, knowing how large Georgetown’s population was, comparatively, felt that the Government would have been deterred in its military drive once Georgetown came out.
Many of us outside of Linden knew that was not going to happen. Georgetowners and Region 4 citizens and the rest of Guyana (I guess minus Linden) are a sheepish set of people who have no courage and do not know what the word oppression means. Their Government can perform the most indecent act on the country and the population like sheep and effete animals accept their slavery. There is simply no limit to which the Government will go to humiliate Guyanese and they take it.
Although I am aware of the relentless hegemony of the PPP rulers, I am naïve to believe that Freedom House would still pull back in areas that are so depraved and shameless.
I simply could not believe what I was reading when I saw a UG advertisement in the newspapers that invited applicants for the position of Human Resource Director and boldly stated that persons over sixty can apply.
Just months ago, four lecturers’ contracts were terminated and the Government put on a brazen defence by arguing that they had met the retirement age of sixty anyway. Yet the classrooms are empty at UG because the institution lacks lecturers. The explanation is simple. We don’t care what the people say; we want that over-sixty person for the job.
This will pass like every other act of inhumanity, indecency and depravity of the PPP Government, and Guyanese will become even more timid.
With each passing day, we see how the white colonial governor was a gentleman in comparison to the horrible anti-colonial politicians that took power from him. Imagine the governor announcing to the press that if striking workers at the airport picketed him, he would fire them. Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, Ashton Chase and others would have marched down to the governor’s office and hounded him out.
Look at Guyana today with those in power who once fought the colonial power. The supposedly glorious PPP produced a president, Bharrat Jagdeo, who told striking air traffic controllers that if on his arrival at the airport from New York they had mounted a picket against him, he would have fired them. Not a word or reaction came from the Guyanese people on that horrible imperialist statement.
A few columns ago, I mentioned the name Ashton Chase. A lawyer in his nineties, he was a friend of Burnham and Jagan and together they fought the colonial governor. Chase was never touched by the governor and was free to write a book titled, “A History of Trade Unionism in Guyana.” But sixty years after he was an anti-colonial fighter, Chase argued in front of a judge that I should be committed to prison for writing a column on Juan Edghill. A modern judge ignored him and I am still free.
How inexplicable life is. Who would have believed that the process of humiliation that came with colonialism was the driving force used by our politicians to drive the colonials out but after the colonials left, they took humiliation to greater levels that went beyond the imagination of the governor.
On a daily basis, the Government of Guyana insults the Guyanese people and throws all types of indecencies and profanities on them and like Pavlovian dogs, they take it.
I will never forget how the nation woke up one morning and found that nine of the top brass of CANU were fired because they failed a lie detector test. There is nothing in law to support such a test and no one in Guyana knows where the people came from to do the test and what President Jagdeo’s relation with them was. The indignity is unstoppable. My heart just bleeds for my country.

Latest News

My cri de coeur

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show | January, 13th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Ramnath sets tone for WI ahead of opener

Seales dominates but Shakeel, Rizwan lead...

Youngsters impress as final day draws near

BCB/Dr. Amarnauth Dukhi U15 Inter Club...

Windies captain Brathwaite stresses bravery,...

In-form Savory dazzles on second day with classy...

Features/Columnists

Burnham must be having a good laugh

Clarifying misconceptions about the Panama Canal

Exim 4% rate

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

My cri de coeur

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show | January, 13th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]