Women, youths and the mistakes of a post-dictatorship government

Aug 12, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I was in the picket line last week outside Parliament holding an anti-Jagdeo placard as part of the effort by the human rights entity, “1823 Coalition for the Parade Ground Monument,” to get Parliament to reject Bharrat Jagdeo as Opposition Leader. A journalist came up to interview me and I immediately aired my disappointment at the continuation of the barriers that have enveloped Parliament the past ten years or more. Read below what he said to me.
I did a column a few weeks ago on my deepening frustration after I saw that the APNU-AFC Government had increased the number of barriers and extended their occupancy into Brickdam, which did not take place under the PPP. Guyanese knew that in 2012 when Ramotar was the minority President, the APNU-AFC parliamentary majority passed a Desmond Trotman motion to remove the barriers. Since June 20, the barriers are still there and increasing in number.
The journalist with a broad smile said to me, “Maan, Fredaay, duh is a minor matter,” and he went on to interview me about the purpose of the anti-Jagdeo picket. Herein lies the stark difference between the journalist and the analyst. The journalist found the barrier issue too small to report on. The journalist looks for big stories.
The analyst finds big meaning in small stories. I have dealt with the steel fences around Parliament in an entire column recently so I will not carp on it again, but small mistakes need critical voices because when silence is the response, danger creeps up and before you know it, the authoritarian hand is grabbing you.
What many women’s groups did last week when they vented their rejection of the small percentage of women representation on a number of boards is healthy for the preservation of democracy. The country has learned that the Government will soon use a different framework in its selection for many more boards that will be filled shortly. In the same breath, youth groups should have rejected the collapse of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport into the Ministry of Education.
This is the most mysterious governmental initiative I have seen so far from APNU-AFC and I am simply dying to hear the rationalization. I am absolutely sure the explanation the government offered could be defeated because there is no logic in it when the implications are seen.
A few months back, I posited in a column that if there is a ministry for the Amerindian people then logically there should be a ministry for youth. If one says that the indigenous people are a group that needs special attention then fine. But the same argument is potent and powerful for youth.
Almost half the population is under thirty years of age. Youth unemployment is over fifty percent.  The under-thirty age group accounts for more than fifty percent of suicides. Almost seventy percent of UG students are under thirty. Almost seventy percent of violent robberies are committed by the under-thirty age group. Almost eighty percent of students who leave high school without the required five CXC subjects are not enjoying a satisfactory, livable income. The point is; there needs to be a separate ministry for youth to deal with these formidable issues.
Why collapse youth with education? That is a super-ministry that will become ill-shaped and clogged up.  Maybe the Youth Ministry could have found another home, but certainly not with the Ministry of Education. Education in itself, in a poor country like Guyana, is a gargantuan task. Resuscitating UG can take up all the energy of the Ministry of Education.
The naked class basis of education will not be eradicated in another twenty years. The class basis of education cries out for attention. Poor students and those from Regions 2, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are at tremendous disadvantage. Education in Guyana benefits mostly rich students, middle class students and those from Region 4.
This is a huge mistake by the new government and the Granger/Nagamootoo regime should simply call a press conference and admit that it was an early misdirection and separate the two Ministries as early as last week. When you look at the argument for a separate ministry for youth, the merger becomes more bizarre. The sports sector can do with its own ministry. Now we have education, culture, youth and sport all wrapped up in the same Ministry.
There are bound to be early mistakes with any new government and it is extremely urgent that when these mistakes are made they are commented on by national stakeholders as when the women folks went for blood with the paucity of women representation on boards.

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