Sharks declare war on sardines; not in the water but in the circus

Apr 25, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Protracted incumbency not only saps the mental energy of an authoritarian cabal, but it destroys the faculty to understand the external environment. In such a sad situation, the tired power-wielder is given to strange behaviour; at times comical behaviour.
It is the sum total of long years in office, in which body and mind cannot function any longer.
If you take Dr Roger Luncheon, Gail Teixeira, Clement Rohee, Bheri Ramsarran, Donald Ramotar, Clinton Collymore, Kellawan Lall, Robert Persaud, Sam Hinds, among others, they had been living in the corridors of power for twenty-two years. That is a long period to be in charge of a country that every day you enter your office you see the land going back in time. After twenty-two years it must lacerate the psyche.
It may be different if these folks were presiding over prosperous countries like the oil-rich Gulf States where money in abundant supply keeps the leaders busy with developmental projects. In the case of Qatar, the monarch woke up one morning and decided that he would start a global news network to rival the American companies. He started Al Jazeera and it is indeed a fierce competitor with the Americans and the BBC.
In Guyana, the leaders haven’t got money to keep them preoccupied with developmental goals. In fact, lack of money contributes to the mental fatigue that comes with long incumbency. The incumbents built the Berbice Bridge, one of the cheapest, ugliest modern structures in the 21st century in any country.
In fact, the bridge had a hard time coming to life because money wasn’t there.
A five-star hotel in Kingston is stalled at the moment because funds are coming in slowly. The psychological burden becomes too much to bear when the incumbents found out that Guysuco is not going to get sufficient money to keep it going.
Last week, a prominent director on the Guyana Cricket Board was having a snack in the Coffee Beans restaurant on Church Street, where one of the most powerful men in Guysuco was having coffee with an ex-PPP leader who is a lawyer and has become a constant thorn in the backside of the PPP with his constant criticism.
The Cricket Board official overheard the Guysuco bigwig telling the lawyer that the $6 billion subsidy cannot last even until the end of the year, given the depth of Guysuco’s debt which is deeper than that part of the Indian Ocean where the missing Malaysian airliner is supposed to be resting. That Guysuco guy will lose his job if the little dictators know the identity of who he was having coffee with.
But neither the PPP critic nor the Guysuco man was aware of who the cricket official was. If they were, they probably would have kept their voices down.
With no money to underpin the use of dictatorial power, patience and mental endurance begin to wear thin. As the years take their toll, silly things, bizarre things, immoral things, comical things accompany the use of naked power. In the PPP case, the mounting embarrassments have virtually eliminated the credibility of all PPP leaders. Sexual molestation, drunk driving, monkey language at press conferences, animal semantics in Parliament, donkey antics in public are potent indications of lost mental energy in the courtyard of the PPP.
The latest in this crazy journey is the announcement by the caprine (adjective from goat; actually I am a goat, I am Capricorn so I know goats don’t normally bite and when they do, only bite bad and stupid people) politician, that the PPP has established an integrity committee to sanction erring members. The range of indiscretions is wide and it includes sexual molestation, corruption etc.
After twenty-two years in power, the PPP finally discovers that it needed an integrity committee to discipline its recalcitrant and immoral cadres. After twenty-two years where ragged and poor members suddenly owned swimming pools and mansions after entering the corridors of power, the PPP wants to investigate depraved behaviour among its ranks.
Why the PPP insists on its continuous asinine behaviour ties in with my theory of vanished mental agility after long years in power.
Guyanese are going to laugh at the news of an integrity committee inside Freedom House. But the committee will do its work. The little boys and girls in the party who steal $5,000 or who convert the party bicycle to their own use or take home the party computer will be dragged before the committee. This will be a movie of sharks swallowing up the sardines. The sharks are the biggest thieves in the PPP.

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Sharks declare war on sardines; not in the water but in the circus

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