Patriotism and profits

Aug 21, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Suppose a very nice and generous boss wants to have sex with his secretary, so he goes to her and asks her for it. She says ‘no, I don’t want to do that because that is not my definition of how relationships work’. He then tells to her that her refusal means she hates him. She replies and says to him that his concept of how a female and male should relate to each other is not the way the world sees it.
Looked at from any perspective she is right. No analogy fits the Sithe Global fiasco more appropriately than this example. From the time the 10th Parliament was convened, the PPP has turned epistemology on its head. The nature and source of knowledge, the meaning of words and the deconstruction of language have been completely reworked by the PPP.
As it stands today, the ruling party has constructed its own definition of terms like the rule of law, democracy, responsible political behaviour, patriotism, racism, etc. If you say that people are being discriminated against, you are the one that is racist. If the opposition votes to postpone a motion in Parliament, it is undemocratic. If the opposition chooses not to support a position enunciated by the government, it is politically reckless. In other words, the PPP is the embodiment of knowledge that has an objective independence. The last people on earth that should lecture Guyanese on patriotism are the PPP’s members.
We return now to the analogy between the boss who wants sex and the Sithe Global imbroglio. What the employer is actually saying is that he determines what he wants from a relationship and if he does not get what he wants then the person rejecting him hates him. Hate then is an attitude that he defines.
We will leave out of the discussion the Private Sector Commission (PSC) and its affiliates who have parroted the accusation of the PPP that the denunciators of the Sithe Global investment are people without patriotism. The PSC people may not be bad human beings after all, but in a hegemonic state such as Guyana is, business people will not criticize the ruling party, simply because they want protection for their profits. The fear of victimization is horrible. But it is more than fear. It is sycophancy for the purpose of wealth creation. The PSC and its lackeys will support evil once their profits are untouched.
The PPP defines patriotism in its own convoluted way, the way the man who demands sex from his secretary defines relationships. If you do not support Sithe Global investment then you are against progress and development in your country. The problem here is that those who make such an accusation are in fact the unpatriotic ones. What the PPP Government has done in the Sithe Global controversy is to endanger the very existence of the nation-state named Guyana.
The Amaila hydro in its present form is a financial project that has enormous disadvantages for the home country. If allowed to continue in its present configuration, the economy of this poor, Third World state will not endure the financial consequences of this investment. I have gone through all the statistical outlays of Clive Thomas, Carl Greenidge, Ramon Gaskin, Christopher Ram and others and I have come to the conclusion that the PPP leadership is an opportunistic, anti-patriotic cabal. It doesn’t matter if Guyana will lose out; it wants the hydro-power programme at all cost. Is that nationalism?
But let us stick to the subject of the meaning of patriotism. Is Sithe Global’s investment more important than the survival of Georgetown and the University of Guyana? Who contributes to the squalor and miasma that have overrun Georgetown? If you discover the culprit then isn’t he/she an unpatriotic devil? Who watches while the country’s only University goes through a slow death? Isn’t that an unpatriotic act? Who has put the NIS in a drowning pool? The NIS is a billion times more valuable to the nation than Sithe Global.
Sithe Global was an invention of Bharrat Jagdeo. I consider Mr. Jagdeo an inherently anti-nationalist leader, the most unpatriotic that the English-speaking Caribbean has produced. Mr. Jagdeo knew from his negotiations with the investors of the Berbice Bridge that it would have been a burden on the poorer folks of Berbice. In the consideration of the return the investors would receive, the tolls were determined. In other words, the toll had to be high in order for the investors to reap their handsome profits. If that is patriotism, then Hitler was a saint. Bharrat Jagdeo’s cynical contempt for Guyana’s sovereignty is being played out in Donald Ramotar’s office with Sithe Global’s cheque book on the President’s desk.

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