Doctor, judge, killer: Life as it is

Mar 26, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Some ladies in their pin stripe suits were indignant. They announced that they would not read the Kaieteur News anymore. The fuss was about a front page photograph of a beheaded victim of gang warfare in Agricola. Of course I had my immediate reply. It was not that I could not understand their revulsion at what they saw (though at the time I supported the newspaper’s decision and still do). What I could not accept was their convenient way of choosing values.
This indecent habit of human beings is something I deeply resent. Don’t tell me that you find a person deserving of being condemned for bad manners but you can enjoy a sound social relation with an employer that underpays his employees. My question at the time is if these ladies were disgusted at the publication of the photograph then they had to be with other forms of value distortion. But they were not.
One of these socialites who announced her boycott of the Kaieteur News had a husband who worked as a Minister in President Jagdeo’s Government. The wife and husband said nothing publicly when Mr. Jagdeo’s “wife”, Varshnie Singh told the nation that Mr. Jagdeo refused to sign the forms to make the marriage legal and accused him of terrible mistreatment.
The pin stripe lady never denounced Mr. Jagdeo. She picked on the Kaieteur News.
When it was discovered that a medical doctor at the Georgetown Public Hospital was convicted in the US of fondling his step daughter, angry citizens, including women groups, nice ladies from the cocktail circuit, human rights organizations and so-called decent men from the same cocktail circuit demanded his employment termination. It happened. There was nothing wrong with this anger.
In any country, the doctor would have been forced out. But unlike other countries, there is a huge mountain of hypocrisy in Guyana when it comes to molestation of children and rape of women.
If you are without status, then you don’t stand a chance if you are accused of domestic abuse. If you belong to the corridors of power, you can pulverize your female lover or your wife and then attend the cocktail event where you will be warmly welcomed. A wife, we were told, committed suicide.
Another wife, we were told, was beaten by the husband when she entered a night club to challenge his lover. When the convicted doctor hears about these untouchables he must have wondered why he was singled out.
The socialites jumped on the Kaieteur News but chose to remain silent on the abusers of women. But more than this, the abusers are still welcomed on the cocktail circuit. Days after the judicial inquiry awarded compensation of eight million Guyana dollars to the relatives of three protestors shot to death by the police at a demonstration last July in Linden, I wrote that the two retired Guyanese judges on the commission, Justices Claudette Singh and Cecil Kennard will still retain their position in the socialite world. They will attend important social functions and will be honoured by the attendees.
No one will frown on them for valuing the lives of three Guyanese citizens at three million dollars each for two of them and two million for another.
One week after I wrote this opinion, I saw in the papers that Justice Kennard was the honoured guest at a sporting event. Where is the convicted doctor? What must be going through his mind when he read about the eight million dollars Justice Kennard put as the value of the lives of three Guyanese but he cannot practice medicine because the socialites call him a convicted child molester who must not be allowed to work in any hospital in Guyana.
But guess who can work in Guyana; one of the men who planned and participated in the assassination of Walter Rodney. This guy is a big part of socialite Guyana. The same people who criticized the Kaieteur News for the front page photograph, the same people who say the doctor must not work are the very people who will hobnob will this conspirator. What a sick society we live in.
I read that the ruling party celebrated the 50th anniversary of the party newspaper, The Mirror” and described the harsh treatment the newspaper received at the hands of the PNC Government. But the same ruling party which forms the government enjoys a close relationship with one of the men who conspired to murder and did assassinate a great Guyanese hero.

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