Contempt for the masses

May 29, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have studied the personality and the politics of Bharrat Jagdeo, and I say most candidly that never would I have believed that Mr. Jagdeo would have waded into the crowds at Stabroek Market Square to offer vendors support against their eviction by City Hall. If any act by a major political player over the past 50 years since Independence was obnoxiously contemptuous of the ordinary folk, it was what Jagdeo did at the Stabroek Market area.
Mr. Jagdeo has been the most contemptuous governmental leader of the labouring masses in the history of this country. The most bourgeois political organization in contemporary Guyana was the United Force under businessman magnate, Peter D’Aguiar. This was a small but strategically placed entity that catered for the interests of the commercial stratum and the bourgeoisie. But D’Aguiar was the employer of hundreds of workers, and it is doubtful he was as dismissive as them when he became Finance Minister in 1964.
Jagdeo was anti-Georgetown. Jagdeo hated the bulk of Georgetown dwellers (probably South Georgetown more than other sections) whom he believed were permanent embracers of the PNC. Georgetown’s infrastructure was under threat of collapse by the time Jagdeo demitted office in 2011. Of course the feeling was mutual. Most Georgetowners (more so in South Georgetown) in turn hated Jagdeo. What could Jagdeo have told those vendors? His perambulations turned into disappointment, because they viciously heckled.
One vendor shouted that they know they are suffering, but they will do so without Jagdeo’s help. But what help did Jagdeo bring to them for the twelve years he was in power? Jagdeo probably thinks the vendors are so stupid that they do not know what kind of president he was. When he left office in 2011, he left Carol Sooba to deal with them, and she dealt with them. She did what Royston King is now doing – chasing them all over the streets.
When Jagdeo left office, he left them under flood waters. When he demitted office, Georgetown, including the Stabroek Square, was fetid and diseased.
There is no other politician in the entire world like Bharrat Jagdeo. You have to give him credit for his courage. Of all people, look who went to talk to vendors. It sounds surreal, and indeed it is. No one has done a financial analysis in actual money terms of how much in concessions the Jagdeo regime gave to chosen foreign investors and his business friends, but let’s do some guessing. What was needed to clean up the Stabroek Square would have been a drop in the ocean compared to what certain investors got in concessions.
People are saying that the dozens of forensic audits may never result in charges. Even if this is so, and it looks like it will be so (politicians are last on the list of people humans do not trust), the forensic audits have destroyed the credibility of Bharrat Jagdeo, because Jagdeo will not be able to survive those revelations. Those findings paint a picture of a man bent on handing Guyana’s resources to his friends and his favoured investors. They portray a leader with no concern about the social elevation of the masses. And the masses know this. They may not be educated people. They may not know how to intellectualize about the complex issues of Guyanese politics, but the masses know their politicians. They know which ruler fooled them and which ruler is a deceptive person.
Against this background, it was mind-boggling to know that Jagdeo went to the Stabroek Square. He did not succeed in his attempted proselytization, but he will not be deterred, and it has to do with the beast inside the heart of politicians. With fifteen years as the man at the helm, Jagdeo neglected the African people, rural Indians, poor Indians, the sugar workers, the labouring classes, the youths, the educational system, the health sector, the University of Guyana. But politicians believe humans are gullible and stupid; you can easily fool them. Armed with this misplaced concept, Jagdeo went to fool the Stabroek vendors. Such barefacedness is morbid.
Don’t let’s pick on Jagdeo alone. As we write, senior members of the Coalition must be addressing thousands and thousands of youths and telling them about the bright future for them under the Coalition. These APNU-AFC politicians will not be deterred, even though they know the bright future for countless youths will be the Camp Street jail for smoking a joint. The same politician that evicted the vendors in 2016 will go to them, in boldfaced fashion like Jagdeo did last week, and ask for their vote. It is called contempt for the masses.

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Contempt for the masses

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