Politicians and power: Freud’s Thanatos

Dec 01, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are things about this country that are unbelievable. It is not that Guyana has more social and moral corrugations than other countries. It is the weight, measurement and nasty dimensions of these caricatures that sicken the mind. Why do we have an Ombudsman? What does he do?
And when he does what he does what happens next?
The Ombudsman paid two of the most expensive law firms in Guyana to offer an opinion on the January 2012 termination of my UG contract. Both firms ruled that the termination was illegal.
Since that time in December 2014 when that report came out, I have not been written to by the University or any other person or institution in Guyana. It is going on to eight months of the APNU-AFC Government and not one official from that regime has made contact with me about the Ombudsman’s report.
All I am asking is what purpose does the Office of the Ombudsman serve? Those law firms had to be paid. And what has become of their report?
Interestingly the people who oppressed me continue in their high offices. Bibi Shadick was uncontrollable at the UG Council meeting in her demand for my removal. She is still on the Council where she holds the position of Pro-Chancellor.
Khurshid Sattaur left thousands and thousands of persons whose income was flying high above mine but singled me out for not paying property tax. For four years, Sattaur went after Kaieteur News to find out how much the paper paid me for my columns. This same Sattaur rides high at the Guyana Revenue Authority.
Hundreds of years ago, the philosophers wrote about crime and punishment. Civilization was bound to fail if society did not create a system of punishment to deter people from demolishing civilization itself. This was the greatest fear of Hobbes when he wrote his great philosophy treatise, “Leviathan.”
The criminal in the street hurt families and loved ones when they rob and shoot a breadwinner. It is the same with dictatorship. So why are the practitioners of dictatorship that hurt loved ones and families still in the service of the State? Only the new government of Guyana can answer that.
Politicians are essentially foolish people. For that reason I never joined a party and will not. I had my chance in 1992 to be on the WPA’s slate of election candidates but my existentialist anarchism warned me to be aware of party membership. The subsequent shape of the WPA justified my decision then.
I campaigned for the APNU+AFC out of love of country and not party. I went home and slept well after each public meeting that I spoke at because I knew I was not deceiving myself.
The inherent foolishness of politicians lies in their fascination with power. Why bother with a mere Ombudsman’s report. That is history. Kissoon’s UG thing is the past. All those whose lives were destroyed are past history. The past has passed. Had I not known about the deep flaws in Guyana’s collective psyche, I would have lamented the inaction on the Ombudsman’s report. But in Guyana one smiles, picks up the pen and writes on. Politicians do not believe they are ordinary mortals. They do not accept they could return to being passengers on a train that no one will look at. This is what power does to politicians. It destroys the value of reason that the Roman philosopher Cicero so brilliantly described as being essential for the continuation of civilization.
Of course, politicians never learn the lessons of history. Guyana never had a historian as President. We have one now. David Granger is a trained historian. But power does not make a distinction between surgeon, actor, priest, midwife, scholar or historian. Once power is possessed, the surgeon’s knife, priest’s sermons, scholar’s research, midwife’s scissors, historian’s textbooks get destroyed in the cult of power. Power comes first second, third, fourth and is coming in strong in fifth place.
This is not a country for the faint-hearted. I guess that explains why our young people leave faster than the bullet train in Japan. They probably dreamt about George Orwell without consciously knowing he wrote, “1984.” They probably dreamt of Arthur Koestler without knowing he wrote, “Darkness at Noon.”
So the vision of a failed system is brought to them through the process of the dream and when they wake up they pack their bags. But though Freud is no longer in vogue, he did say that dreams are expressions of what lies deep in the subconscious. I guess you can say, Sigmund Freud best explains Guyana’s Thanatos.

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