Man died from electrocution, then came back to life

May 04, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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It happened in front of my eyes last week. Guysuco and the Ministry of Labour held a week-long exhibition on the site. A man came out of his car, parked on the site, toured the booths and when he was about to enter his car, the high tension wires collapsed. It enveloped him, electrocuted him, burned him to death
As he lay on the ground next to his SUV, no one tried to help, including me. All of us had a sense that a miracle was about to happen. The gentleman got up, the burnt flesh disappeared. He smiled at us, waved a PPP party card for us to see and went into the fast food restaurant across the street.
As he crossed the bridge over the trench that linked the embankment to the roadway, he looked back at me and with an intestinal smile and a barely audible voice, said to me; “The wires recognize PPP officials, they kill only the ordinary folks”.
Given the recent memory of the eviction process, the lies of the Jagdeo regime and my total disgust with the sheep my fellow Guyanese have become, I replied in decibels that were definitely audible to the ear of Jagdeo in Pradoville 2 and Ramotar in his office.
I said, “One day that invincibility of the PPP and its extended cabal will dry up, that will be no miracle, but the working out of the poetic essence of history.”
I chose to mention the concept of the “poetic essence of history” to him because a few years ago, while he was General Secretary of the PPP, Donald Ramotar, on reading a column of mine (does he still read my columns – they all do at Freedom House that is why Jagdeo sued me for libel and why each year there are over two hundred letters in the Chronicle about me) in which I mentioned the “poetic essence of history,” replied with a letter to the Kaieteur News.
In his letter, De Donald or Uncle Donald or President Ramotar asked me to explain what the concept, the “poetic essence of history” meant. I didn’t reply because I don’t think it was my place to educate Ramotar. I didn’t respond also because I knew Ramotar would not have heard about the “poetic essence of history,” because Cheddi and Janet Jagan made sure their semi-literate protégés did not touch Shakespeare. For Cheddi, Shakespeare would have been bourgeois literature.
I never defined the “poetic essence of history” after that letter of Ramotar and up to this day, I haven’t done so. I was told that De Donald was having drinks with a friend at a ten-star hotel that he patronizes so often you think he is part owner, “Sleep In,” on Brickdam.
The topic turned to American politics and Obama. I was told when Obama’s name came up, Uncle Donald said that after Obama won, then he realized what the “poetic essence of history” meant. Good for De Donald. He learnt about a bourgeois concept Shakespeare popularized.
Anyway let’s get back to the man who died then came back to life. The place was the Lamaha Street embankment between Camp Street and Vlissengen Road. That area was inhabited from as early as the 1950s by squatters. These people didn’t just occupy their “huts” for residential purposes. They planted crops which is where their incomes came from.
Most of these squatters were family units. Many of these occupants spanned two generations. The Burnham Government never sought to remove these people. But the Hoyte Government did attempt to move them after a high diplomatic official from the US Embassy found the site an eyesore when she took up residence on Lamaha Street.
The PPP, then in opposition, descended on the area and urged the squatters not to leave. In the end, the diplomat moved to a more prestigious district and the crop growers remained. More than sixty years after their occupation on the Lamaha Street embankment, the Jagdeo Government in 2010 evicted the residents.
The Jagdeo Government told the squatters that because of the installation of high tension electrical cables they will endanger themselves so they have to move. They refused and were evicted.
Last year, the Government of Guyana landscaped the entire site from Camp Street to Oronoque Street. The employees of the New Thriving Hotel at Camp Street, and those of the 704 Food and Entertainment Bar at Albert Street, park at the site. In addition, visitors to these two entities are allowed to park there. Now exhibitions are held there. But the high tension wires are still there.
How come they don’t endanger the lives of these people and their vehicles?
My fictional account of the electrocution and the rise from the dead was used to dramatize the extent to which the PPP Government has cowed this entire country. This is a Government that is permitted by this nation to do any depraved or unconscionable act. Shocking story about the electrical wires.

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