Silence at dawn: Death of a country

Apr 17, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It would take a book length manuscript to examine the nature of politics in the countries (192) that make up the United Nations membership. In many of those states, the government does not accept citizens protesting on any issue at all much less in the area of politics. Five such countries come to mind – North Korea, Saudia Arabia, China, Cuba and Iran.
Of these five, the extreme, Kafkaesque case is North Korea. The least said about North Korea, the better. In the other four, there are protests, though such demonstrations in Cuba hardly get reported in the world. In many other countries, the government does not tolerate dissent but will not be as brutal on agitation against small scale violations as they would in the area of politics.
Guyana is the ironic example in this group. The government does not prevent demonstrations against the political system or anything else yet no one protests against any kind of violation, whether political, social, cultural, etc. The most sickening abuse by state or police or business or civil society can take place in Guyana and it is as if this land is a zombie graveyard – the abuses move no one.
It would take books and books to enumerate the mountains of wrongs that go on daily in this society and they all pass unnoticed. Everyday, you jump from your breakfast chair, spilling your coffee because you say at last here is one that the Guyanese people will not tolerate. But all you did in that act of stupidity is burn yourself with your coffee.
When I read a letter naming one of the richest families in this country of doing a nasty thing to its employees, I thought we had one here to galvanize public opinion. This family owns a wharf where the annual transactions must be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the family retail store, employees have to buy their own toilet paper and hand washing liquid for use in the store washrooms.
After that letter, I did a column on this nightmare. But that was it; a single letter-writer and a single columnist – no other voice, no other pen. Even in Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Iran, there would have been more public expressions of this outrageous mistreatment of poor employees by multi-billionaire people.
About ten years ago, I met one of the members of this billionaire family. He told me he was a working class man.
Of course he was disrespecting me but you can’t force people to respect you. I did tell him that he was talking nonsense. So last week I was passing by the store and I saw him. I said with light seriousness, “How is the rich man?” He enquired with a smile, “You have something against rich people?” I said no. There was no time to tell him I have everything against rich people when they can compel their employees to pay for the toilet paper the employers must provide for the washrooms.
There is no other country in the world that would remain silent on the constant mistakes made at the only State-owned hospital that result in disfigurements and deaths. It was no joking matter but I laughed when I was discussing a story with my wife over the weekend about the Georgetown Public Hospital in this newspaper last Friday.
A policeman told the Kaieteur News, that he quickly bolted out of the hospital (that is what made me laugh) when they told him they had to remove his ankle for a simple bullet wound in the upper right thigh. Suspecting that they had made a mistake, he went straight into a private hospital. His mother told this newspaper on Tuesday that the limb was further damaged by the Georgetown Public Hospital after admittance.
Read this policeman’s plight and you see the medical nightmare poor people have to endure at the Georgetown Public Hospital. To date no one has sued this hospital and no one calls for an investigation into this. You are poor, you fall sick, you enter the Georgetown Hospital, you die, and your relatives’ questions are met with abuse.
A school expels small kids in the middle of the term for mere possession of a cell phone. And Guyana accepts this trauma. From reading my columns you would know one of my close friends is Leonard Craig who took Digicel before the court of the Public Utilities Commission as reported in this newspaper last week.
Leonard and I are planning to take over the Guyana Consumers Association and bring it back to life. Consumers are treated like dogs in this country and there is no protest. Why is Guyana so dead?

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Silence at dawn: Death of a country

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