In Guyana, power was/ is always used against the poor and weak

May 02, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

All the time, in all places you hear people say it is time for the young people to lead Guyana. This is so because Guyana has a pretty young population. But a young society does not mean your youths are progressive, good, impressive people. I honestly do not see our young people as the kind of folks to admire. What causes are these people championing? Where is their vision? Where is their social anger in the face of sixty five years of authoritarian central and local governance?
I taught at UG for 26 years and I say with the deepest of sincerity in my heart that Planet Earth has never seen in the 21st century a more sheepish and cowardly university population as what I saw at UG during my academic career there. I agree with the reparation demand for what the world did to the slaves but as we demand reparation we must also demand mental reparation for our young generation.
Lincoln Lewis is over sixty years of age yet we hear his voice on the call for a Ministry of Labour. Can we identity any young person or youth group that has demanded a Ministry of Youth and Sports? Why wouldn’t a post-colonial country not have a Ministry of Labour? Why would a country with one of the world’s youngest populations not want to have a Ministry of Youth and Sports? Everywhere you go in this country, we see the disappointing behaviour of our youths.
The Chronicle has two youthful Editors who are quite happy to perpetuate media censorship. You would think it would be the old versus the young at the Chronicle with the former arguing for state propaganda and the latter battling away for the beginning of a new day at the Chronicle. The young at the Chronicle is older than the old. The Prime Minister’s point man at all state media entities, Imran Khan is a young man compared with President Granger who is over seventy years. Yet Granger has a far more hands-off approach to the state media than Khan.
Maybe the society knows how uninspiring Guyana’s young generation is so they refuse to take them seriously. The percentage of Cabinet members of both senior and junior Ministers is beyond the age of 58; the same with our diplomatic appointments. Guyana has no young, bright diplomat that heads an embassy. Is this an accident? Maybe not. Maybe the older heads in power know what they are doing. We come now to the City Council. Young Sherod Duncan is a UG final year student. He already has a UG degree.
Sherod is acting for Mayor Chase-Green. He has been meeting with the vendors over the issue of sprucing up the façade of the Stabroek Market Square in attempts at restoring the once “glory” of the area (no one ever thinks of restoring the glory of democratic power in Guyana). As a young man with a more than four decades of a career left, Sherod should know that the first act in the resuscitation of the Stabroek site is the removal of the fire service. Why would office-holders want to move the vendors in a project to rehabilitate the face of the Stabroek Market Square and not the fire service?
Why in this Mephistophelean barrenness named Guyana, the weak and the poor are always the first causalities of brute force and the bestial instincts of power possessors? I chose Sherod to discuss in this column because when we had the LGE debate, as a panelist, my questions were directed to him. I raised the vexation of the ban on sand trucks in Georgetown after 7 AM. But humongous containers causing disruption in the city all through the day and night are allowed this rampage. I told Duncan that was shameless class discrimination against working people. He responded positively by saying that once elected he will look into that ugly situation. I hope he does. After the debate, the contestants faced the press. My question to all of them (of which Duncan was the only one that got into the City Council) was if they would support a forensic audit of the City Hall. Duncan agreed.
What have we got since the young LGE contestants became City Councilors? Royston King, the Town Clerk still operates like a one-man army. The Merriman Mall vendors between Orange Walk and Cummings Street still operate in their cramped little dog kennels. The paid car park of King and Chase-Green on East Street is now a cemetery. Guyana has a new “Bruk-Up Maan.” But his name is not Benn.

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In Guyana, power was/ is always used against the poor and weak

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