Replay Jagdeo’s funeral speech today

May 26, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

After almost fifty years of Independence, do the Third World masses believe even one word of condemnation of the white colonials by their so-called Independence leaders? A good answer comes from reading the results of a credible poll by The Gleaner, in which over sixty percent of Jamaicans want to return to rule by the British.
If such a survey was taken in Guyana, the percentage opting for the return of white man administration would climb into the eighties.
The cussing down of the white colonial has lost its appeal, totally, in a place like Guyana. Who believes these leaders when they run down the white man? Two reasons explain this change. The modern Guyanese nation consists of people who have travelled outside to at least one country. They read and see what is happening in other countries. They see development that is breath-taking in other lands and they know their country is going backward rather than forward.
The second reason why the anti-colonial rhetoric no longer holds sway among the masses is because the people see the local replacement of the white man as being worse than the white colonial in every sphere of life, be it, style of living, style of leadership, provision of service, administrative culture, integrity in office, developmental projects, even personal values.
How ironic that just weeks before Guyana celebrates forty-seven years of Independence, Bharrat Jagdeo, who served as president for twelve years, told the audience at the funeral service for Reepu Daman Persaud that the colonials were so contemptuous of the locals that they encouraged them not to send their children to school.
Mr. Jagdeo is a pathetic figure who lives in the past. That anti-colonial bell has been rung out. The anti-colonial song has been sung out. Mr. Jagdeo ruled Guyana for twelve years. We are into forty-seven years of Independence and look at our educational system. Is it better today than when the white man discouraged us from sending our children to school, according to Mr. Jagdeo?
Before this essay proceeds further let me get something out of the way. Mr. Jagdeo cannot produce a history book to bolster his nonsensical claim that the colonials instructed Guyanese parents not to send their children to school.
After forty-seven years of Independence, look at our only university. This writer says most unambiguously that if any high school student in this country is taken on a tour of the University of Guyana, then you pick out at random, any university anywhere in the world, and take that same Guyanese student on a tour of that foreign institution, the student would not want to even enter UG much less study there.
After forty-seven years of Independence, a majority of our schools are in a more dilapidated state than when the colonials ruled us.
How can any leader in government in this country criticize the colonial administration when you take a look at Georgetown? Have we gone backward as a nation since Independence in 1966? Only a twisted, ugly mind would look at the city of Georgetown and conclude that we have progressed as a nation. If there is any reason to believe that Guyana is a failed state, it is the primitive conditions that have enveloped Georgetown. Do you know there isn’t a dictator in the post-WW2 world that would have allowed his capital city to deteriorate so horribly?
What went through the mind of the listeners last evening and what will go through the minds of the attendees this evening as speaker after speaker spoke and will speak on the progress we have made as a sovereign nation since we became Independent in May 1966?
After forty-seven years of Independence, post-colonial security forces get away with more bestial brutalities than the colonial police. If the colonial police shot to disarm, the post-colonial police shoot to kill.
Forty-seven years after Independence, Guyanese buy and eat their cheese and drink their tinned and boxed milk from top industrialized nations whose agricultural pastures can hold into one of the islands in the Essequibo River. The most popular cheese in Guyana comes from Holland. We import milk from post-modern Denmark.
We return to Mr. Jagdeo and his funeral address. The white man, Jagdeo told us, didn’t want us to send our children to school. But we want to live in the land of the white man. Statistics show that 14 persons a day leave Guyana for the US and that figure does not include legal migration to Canada and illegal migration to Canada and the US.
When the white man ruled us, we couldn’t swim in his estate pool. We still can’t.

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Replay Jagdeo’s funeral speech today

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