Will the Mandela example be adopted in Guyana?

Dec 10, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It is incomprehensible that leaders around the world shower the most ethereal praise on Mandela, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, yet practise the worst form of malice and vindictiveness against their own citizens. Is there an explanation? There is none that I know of in the field of knowledge. This is the part of life that is unfathomable.
We can begin a journey to understand this enigma in civilization but it would be fruitless. The immediate example that comes to mind is our former president, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo. What Mr. Jagdeo has done has no explanation in human nature. Awarded the title of Champion of the Earth by the UN and named as one of the heroes of the environment by Time magazine, Mr. Jagdeo did absolutely nothing to take pride in those accolades.
While given the international limelight, Mr. Jagdeo neglected the environment of his own country, whose capital under Mr. Jagdeo became the most putrid on the globe. What was impossible to understand is that not even an attempt was made by this leader to show the Guyanese people that he truly earned the titles given him by sections of the international community. How do you explain this immense fault?
It has no logic. It is the same for religion. When I was small, I heard that in the churches, special benches in the front row would be reserved for the white folks and if you arrived early and were naïve to occupy one of those seats, you were asked to vacate it. I have seen the most devout practitioners of religion commit some of life’s worst immoralities. What is the explanation? There is none. That’s life.
So it will be the same with Mandela. Here in Guyana, the ruling party has turned its back on the legacy of its own founder, Cheddi Jagan, much less to practice what Nelson Mandela preached. You can use volumes of research to prove that Dr. Jagan was not politically correct as his admirers want to believe.
In fact, the evidence against his flawless political behaviour is overwhelming but like Forbes Burnham and many other controversial leaders, he had his strong points.
One of Jagan’s greatest gifts was that he was simply not interested in an ostentatious life. He wasn’t interested in the accumulation of wealth. He was not in the least a corrupt man. And like his competitor, Forbes Burnham, he was essentially concerned with the quality of life for the lower economic classes.
Jagan died in 1997, and since then his party has continued in power and in those sixteen years his protégés have engaged in unprecedented corruption never before seen in the Caribbean. In those sixteen years, the gap between rich and poor has widened to the extent that it threatens social stability.
In those sixteen years, the ostentatious life style of some people in office earning ordinary salaries could be compared to Wall Street bankers. Swimming pools became a requirement for those building their mansions.
Few, if any, would argue that the PPP today bears any resemblance to the organization that Dr. Jagan founded. For those who are expecting to see even a slight emulation of what the great Mandela stood for in Guyana, it may be hoping for too much. We simply do not have that kind of political culture in this country.
But why single out the PPP leadership only for its refusal to practice what Mandela stood for?
In the opposition and in civil society, the praise for Mandela has been unstoppable but will his examples be followed in those quarters? Is it not only in the corridors of power, we see the vindictiveness, petty-minded malice and pomposity. It is all over this country in areas where it serves as no guiding light for a country whose population is very young
This is a country where even if your criticism or candour is contextually justified, you will earn enemies.
Great people like Mandela, Gandhi and King, and no doubt President Obama will be revered in this country by people with power and wealth but they will not use that power and wealth to dissolve the tragedy this country has lived with for over sixty years. What is the explanation? There is none.
But we end on a pessimistic note. Can’t Guyana wake up a morning and see a horizon in front of their eyes where freedom and opportunity burn as bright as the sun? And that this brave, new horizon didn’t evolve or emerge by accident but fashioned by the deliberate consciousness of Guyanese leaders who wanted to leave something that Mandela would have been proud of?

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Will the Mandela example be adopted in Guyana?

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