How can any country be so shambolic and chaotic?

May 01, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A quality we must at all times respect a human for is, “frankness.” One may not accept the character make-up of another person, but if that person is always inclined to speak their mind and offer you their unrestrained, candid attitude, then that is a quality that should attract recognition. If a CEO wants to be regaled with sycophancy, he/she will never be a competent, visionary CEO, because they are not in receipt of honest suggestions that could help the company become better.
Give me a frank person any day to the soft, spoken, well-mannered human that would ruthlessly deceive you without ever giving you even an inkling of their deceptive personality. You know where you stand with a person who is brutally frank. I came back at the beginning of 1984 from studies abroad and after a short stint in Grenada. One day I was jogging on the seawall in the vicinity of Liliendaal when I met a high-level UG official I didn’t get along with when I was a student at UG.
At that time, most of the University staff and student population were anti-government or pro-Walter Rodney. This man stood out at that time as a person who openly said he was not interested in politics. For his stance, he earned a lot of detractors at UG. Many felt he was secretly a supporter of the Burnham Government. I knew he was. We didn’t see each other for years, since I was out of Guyana. As we chatted on the wall, I saw the change in his political stance from when I knew him in the late seventies at UG.
He opened up to me. His problem with the Burnham Government was not politics but service. He told me didn’t care about rigged elections, Walter Rodney’s murder, Hamilton Green’s politics, mass games etc. He just wanted to live his life with the necessities and amenities, and their absence was his grouse with President Burnham – no electricity, no water through the taps, no telephone service etc. This was nothing new he was telling me. People are like that; many humans are not political animals, they don’t want to get involved in politics, they just want to live in peace and expect their government to provide them with the services that should be present in the 21st century.
That seawall conversation took place in 1984. Long after then, I became a father and my daughter was brought up from cradle to perfume with blackouts. My daughter is a UG graduate and from cradle to UG, she lived with blackouts. My daughter in 2016 is living with blackouts. We got electricity disruption under Jagdeo and Ramotar four times a week at Turkeyen.
Since the new government came to power, the disruption is almost daily. We get blackouts where I live six days a week. It is simply unbearable. Internet service is erratic where I live. The experts came to my home and after testing, identified the fault at the supply end, that is, GTT. I called GTT. They gave me a reference number and said after three working days, I would be tended to. I never heard back from GTT and my complaint was made two weeks ago. Imagine I have to use the internet to send a daily column to Kaieteur News from Monday to Sunday.
Does anything work in Guyana? Does logic operate in Guyana? On Thursday afternoon, I made a western turn from Sheriff Street into Homestretch Avenue where the National Cultural Centre is located. The road was blocked off, with a traffic rank manning the barricade. I suspected it was the construction work taking place on the D’Urban Park project. The next choice was natural – Hadfield Street. So I turned into Hadfield Street. Halfway down Hadfield Street, that roadway too was blocked off. All vehicles then had to turn back in an eastern direction to get out. It was pandemonium.
Couldn’t the police and the Ministry of Public Infrastructure put the barricades at the top of Hadfield Street as they did at Homestretch Avenue? The next pathway to go west would be D’Urban Street or as it is legally known; Joseph Pollydore Street. Now because of the blockade of Homestretch Avenue and Hadfield Street, drivers jam-packed Joseph Pollydore Street. When we reached Chapel Street, Sandy’s Funeral Parlour had a large funeral, so there was vehicular madness. Cars and minibuses were just touching each other, going nowhere of course. I simply gave up and waited when it was my turn for my bumper to get hit. This is Guyana weeks before we celebrate 50 years of nihilism.

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How can any country be so shambolic and chaotic?

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