The evolution of monsters

Dec 28, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are seven billion people in the world and less than one percent knows how it feels to come close to death, how it feels to know that you may die and not see your loved ones again. It is a drama that you should pray never happens to you. It is an emotional rollercoaster ride that you should hope in your life, you never experience.
The year 2015 saw a miracle. For me, a miracle occurred with the removal of the PPP as the controllers of Guyana. I am entering my 38th year of marriage with one kid. I could not ever conceive what would have happened to their minds if the night I didn’t return and the morning after my death was discovered. This thought I lived with in 2015. I believe President Jagdeo and Ramotar should be investigated for violent attacks on PPP critics during their shambolic reign but I guess that would not happen.
There is then a personal feeling of euphoria in the passing of 2015 – it brought an end to the psychosis inside the reign of the PPP
We cannot predict life not even with ten percent accuracy but this I know; if the APNU-AFC is given twenty-five years of interrupted domination, it could become like the PPP. This is what permanent rule does to the mind of rulers. It was the long years of PPP rule that devastated this country.
The “eternal” control of the PPP over Guyana is a philosophical instruction to every Guyanese that leaders should not be given unlimited time to govern – it breeds ownership. My deep belief is that the people I knew in the PPP when I was a very young man would not have turned out to be the monsters they evolved into had they lost power after ten years in office.
It will fill volumes to describe how well in the seventies onward, I knew Clement Rohee, Roger Luncheon, Robert Persaud, Donald Ramotar among others. But as the years crept up, as they became powerful, as the power became permanent, the PPP leaders we knew as liberators in the seventies and eighties became monsters. These were the people on the picket line shouting for the reinstatement of Dr. Walter Rodney when President Burnham coerced the Council of the University to cancel his appointment.
Gail Teixeira was there in the pro-Rodney demonstrations in 1974. When Gail Teixiera became the decisive controller of UG affairs, she did to lecturers the PPP didn’t like exactly what Burnham did to Walter Rodney. I am still struck with confusion how Walter’s wife could put faith in these people and request their government to commission an enquiry into Walter’s death.
In May, 2015, the tropical Mussolinis of Guyana were dethroned. It is doubtful that in the future they could have the kind of unlimited power that they acquired after 1992. My own feeling is that they will not get back in office for a very long time to come and even if in the foreseeable future they do, it will not be with the latitude and magnitude they enjoyed.
Extensive constitutional changes (that should be implemented before 2020) will dilute the enormity of centralized power. So 2015 has now taken its place as a special moment in Guyanese history – the fall of the monsters. How will the history books treat 2015?
I think that will depend on what the audits reveal and the attitude of APNU-AFC regime to these inquiries. We could be on the threshold of a brand new moral world in Guyana if we hold abusive power accountable. 2015 could end up as one of the greatest signposts in the entire history of Guyana (colonial and post-colonial) if this government corrects the enormous depravities committed against the nation by the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal.
To put it another way, the significance of 2015 lies in the imprisonment of leaders who committed nasty illegalities and the society made them pay for it.
The leaders in the Coalition Government should not delude themselves into thinking that the expectations that 2015 brought could easily be swept away by ongoing generosities so that the nation will forget the clamour for justice. Rivers and oceans of wrongs were committed against this nation that finally saw a ray of light in 2015.
The 2015 dispensation must shine the torchlight on those infamies. The 2015 dispensation must fumigate the stables. Only when these things are done can Guyanese say that 2015 was a year of freedom. But I do admit; I can live again.

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The evolution of monsters

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