The sugar cake seller and the billionaire

Feb 11, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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You’re running with me
Don’t touch the ground
We’re the restless hearted
Not the chained and bound
The sky is burning
A sea of flame
Though your world is changing
I will be the same
I doubt very much that any political party will tolerate my uncompromising stand on human hypocrisy. In politics, a political party has to ignore major displays of hypocrisy because inherently, electoral parties have to be seen as crowd pleasers. It is a logical outcome that must be understood though it may not be philosophically acceptable.
When you are a human rights advocate, these electorally determined inconveniences can be seen as perversities that are hard to tolerate.
There is no question in my mind that both the AFC and APNU are largely tolerant of the unpatriotic minds of certain Private Sector Commission actors. These parties seriously believe that an organization has to ignore the morally low behaviour of many important stakeholders and engage them as a matter of policy.
For this reason, I doubt I can take out membership in any political party. I will create confusion because I am essentially opposed to sleeping with the enemy for electoral gains. If I was a member of the PNC or AFC, I would have gone public with a denunciation of their meeting with the Private Sector Commission (PSC) on the anti-laundering Bill. In going public, I suspect, I would come up for disciplinary treatment or have my membership revoked.
This analyst does not believe that the PSC is a morally acceptable organization. These people are shameless in their open endorsement of the PPP Government beginning with the mess that President Jagdeo introduced into this country. These PSC people have nothing but contempt for this country and the poorer strata of Guyana.
The PSC people are barefaced supporters of policies that have driven the last nail in the coffin of ethnic suspicion, continue the horrors of workers’ exploitation, continue the terror of education devastation, especially at the tertiary level, perpetuate gigantic levels of corruption; all in all policies that have wiped away any gain of modern civilization in this land.
Lo and behold! These very Anti-Christ citizens suddenly discovered a document that they themselves threw away in the garbage – nationalism. The business folks, the bankers (which banking institution in Guyana has trade union representation – Republic Bank in Trinidad has but not its branch in Guyana) insurance companies (one of which has taken up four blocks of downtown Georgetown for its own parking which I refuse to acknowledge), the multi-billionaire gold miners and the rest of the wealthy classes want the opposition to vote for the anti-laundering Bill so as to avoid economic and financial chaos.
All the rich beggars who have lined up on the steps of Congress Place to beseech the PNC to support the Bill have suddenly found out that the voting down of the Bill will bring instability to this country. Isn’t this abject hypocrisy? But it is also deception. The rich beggars, at Congress Place have now comprehended the causal factor for disaster in Guyana – lack of anti-money laundering legislation.
There is a plethora of violations that can cause a society to disintegrate – official practice of racism, massive kleptocratic operations, naked abuse of people’s rights among others.
The PSC underlings do not accept that and don’t care to understand the basis of instability in a country. The PSC sycophants see only one factor that spells disaster – the absence of anti-laundering laws.
So the opposition is given a lecture in political economy. If the Bill is not given parliamentary approval, all in Guyana will perish. No one will be saved; from the lady who sells her sugar cakes outside the rundown school in Georgetown to the billionaire miner with his New York bank account.
But why don’t APNU and the AFC go to the sugar cake seller and explain politics to her? That vendor will tell the opposition that certain sections of a society have nothing to lose if the nation disintegrates because they don’t have anything in the first place.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend outside Nigel’s Supermarket during the period of Macbeth’s witches. While mo fyaah/slow fyaah was being stoked, I asked this fearless woman how long the protestors plan to be on the streets. She said, “Freddie as lang as possible; we ain’t gat nutting to lose because we ain’t gat nutten.”
Try telling pavement vendors who are harassed everyday by the Minister Bruckup’s hammer; try telling the poor who work for minimum wage, try telling sugar workers whose employment has disappeared that disaster will come from voting down the Bill. They will gladly tell you, “Let disaster come, we ain’t gat nutting fuh lose.”

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