The passing of the droit du seigneur

Aug 28, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In feudal times the aristocratic lord had the right to take the virginity of any of his vassal’s wives on the day of marriage. This was called droit du seigneur. In authoritarian systems where the oligarchs had complete hegemony, droit du seigneur applied in the political context, meant the dictators could do what they wanted.
Now that the ancien régime has fallen, creepy tales out of a Draculean storybook are being shown to a nation that can only watch in disbelief. Guyana is experiencing a quotidian theatre of the exposure of unimaginable droit du seigneur. It is the tall story of a tyrannical cabal that did whatever it wanted. It had the power of the aristocratic lord. Is the worse yet to come?
Over half a billion dollars were drawn down by a Ministry and there is no trace as yet as to where the money went. It is logical to assume that there are more mysterious venalities like this one.
The Prime Minister said that in the 2014 budget, $23 million was allocated for the purchase of vehicles for the Office of the Prime Minster of which $18 million went to the acquisition of a Land Cruiser. The menagerie of cars never turned up at the Prime Minister’s compound. The PM provided the details of an alternative arrangement by a former minister. He further disclosed that between 2012 and 2014, $50 million dollars were allocated for the purchase of vehicles for the PM’s office. When the ancien régime fell, only eight old, reconditioned cars were found in the PM’s jurisdiction. Where did the money or the cars go? Why did one of the poorest economies on the globe spend 250, 000 American dollars for vehicles for the Prime Minister in just two years?
Logical deduction comes in. If in two years, US$250,000 was spent, then how much is the actual sum for vehicles over the twenty- three-year period in which Sam Hinds was Prime Minister? This is where the white man blame game becomes appalling nonsense. Almost fifty years after Independence, Guyana still begs developed countries for aid grants to the point where the Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding, in 2009 called Guyana an international panhandler. This very mendicant spends US$250,000 on transport resources for just one Minister and within a time frame of just two years
If anything was clear as day under a sunlit sky under the reign of the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal was its enjoyment of droit du seigneur and the purchase of Red House is a huge photograph of the depravity. To listen to what happened to Red House would give you goose bumps. One still cannot believe it is true.
A state-owned heritage building was transferred into private hands under a lease and the recipients are in fact the ruling party. But the insanity doesn’t stop there. The rent is not a million dollars a month so that at the end of three years the government can do something worthwhile with the accumulated thirty-six million. The rent is an insulting $1000 monthly (that is Guyanese currency, not American).
The Red House immorality is just the tip of the iceberg in the manifestation of the PPP’s droit du seigneur. In many ways, the take-over of the Arthur Chung Convention Centre is the crudest act of philistinism in Caribbean governance. I live near the Centre and have seen the desecration of that place that borders on semi-civilized politics. Birthday parties, weddings, engagements, Phagwah festivities and funerals were held there. The chief actors in all these events were related to the déclassé leadership of the just fallen ancien régime.
The funerals were those of Navin Chandarpal, a party apparatchik who substituted hard work for what the French would call étate d’ivresse and Reepu Daman Persaud, whose religious career was marked by what the French would call tatillonne.
Why would any self-respecting government permit its high-ranking official to have birthday escapades at the country’s only international convention centre? Even if the state wanted to give Chandarpal and Persaud an ostentatious funeral ambience, why choose the Convention Centre and not Red House? Red House has always been associated with political symbols because of its occupancy by Premier Jagan. One would have thought it would have been fitting to have the funeral services there.
The ancien régime is gone, but what it has left behind, when it is exposed, will no doubt shock not only Guyana but the immediate Caribbean and beyond. In every household tomorrow, the question is there. What other depraved, immoral, corrupt act has the PPP done while in office?

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