Dave Martins, Oscar Ramjeet, Shaun Samaroo and Guyana’s tragedy

Sep 10, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This is such a depressed country that it does nothing for the optimism of the younger generation when they see some of the most outrageous things being written by people who should not attempt to write such things. It is really irritating. This sad country can do without these unholy emanations.
I once did a column (September 25, 2012 captioned, “Every country has corruption, beggars but …”) in response to Dave Martins, in the Stabroek News, who wrote that he saw corruption and beggars in Canada and the US, so he couldn’t understand why people in Guyana keep carping on and lamenting about corruption and beggars in Guyana.
The United States is the world’s only superpower in endless ways – economy, world influence, military might, world trade, scientific discoveries etc. Canada is among the eight strongest economies in the world. The US has over three hundred million people and is a very large territory, a couple hundred years old in terms of sovereignty.
Over that time, institutions that are not easy to demolish, have been built up, and their viability and independence safeguard the democratic content of the US nation-state. It is unacceptable for any Guyanese to say that corruption and beggary in the US have the same effect in Guyana.
Guyana is one of the poorest states in the world. It never really got started in terms of democracy and independent State institutions. It remains an authoritarian polity since colonial times; it has a very small population— under 800,000. Whereas corruption among State employees would not even have dented the economy of the US, corruption in Guyana can be as devastating as elephants on a rampage on a baby’s stroller.
Mr. Martins is at it again. This time he substitutes ethnic discrimination for corruption, informing his readers that like corruption, he sees ethnic hostilities in most countries in the world, and it exists all over the world. He cites the US again.
The trouble with his example of the US is that while race and corruption taint the US, it hasn’t destroyed it. The US continues to be a better economy than most countries in the world and dishes out money on military spending and aid as if it has trillions of trees and notes fall freely from them all over the US.
Ethnic domination has virtually destroyed Guyana. It has devastated our political economy and has reduced us to a virtual pariah in the CARICOM family. In a poor economy with 800,000 persons, race discrimination is bound to harm Guyana in irreparable ways. It has.
Why is Guyana so annoying? Up comes Oscar Ramjeet, a PPP supporter who migrated many moons ago. Does he know what is going on in Guyana or like Rickey Singh, he cannot see beyond his ethnic nose? Ramjeet (people like Martins and Ramjeet should have some respect for their age) took umbrage at Carl Greenidge’s observation that there is political interference in the judiciary.
He calls Greenidge’s statement rubbish and declares that since Greenidge is not an attorney he has limited skills.
Ramjeet is a lawyer and not one that I know that has excelled. In fact, he can be regarded as a low-rated attorney. Maybe Ramjeet (he made some awful statements about Buxton to which he got a fitting reply from Dr. David Hinds) is more of a politician than a lawyer.
The political interference in the judiciary in Guyana is so glaring that it is bound to enhance the fear of those in Jamaica and Trinidad about the appellate dimension of the Caribbean Court of Justice.
It is a waste of time to engage people like Rickey Singh and Oscar Ramjeet, but what is necessary is to reply to their sycophantic support for a depraved regime in Guyana. Such exposure is necessary.
I will leave Ramjeet with just one example. A libel writ filed by President Jagdeo in September 2010 came to be heard eleven months after. This has to be a record, even by North American and European standards. Libel writs for 2002 are yet to be heard. Yet Ramjeet has the gall to sprout his nonsense. Thank God people like him don’t live in Guyana.
Finally, Shaun Samaroo, the Stabroek News columnist who covers the Rodney Commission. The Stabroek News is a respected national institution that has the unswerving support of this columnist. If the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News are weakened, this country goes deeper in darkness. What Samaroo is doing with his reporting on the Rodney Commission is not only gutter journalism, but dangerous propaganda.
His Chronicle infamy is bound to affect Stabroek News’s great image.

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