Life is and will always be a personal journey for everyone

Jul 17, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When I saw the large list of lawyers who borrowed money from the Treasury and refused (I will say refused because you cannot be that stupid to forget that you borrowed money from the bank, the government, your employer etc.) to pay it back, I was not in the least surprised. Nothing should alarm or confuse the student of philosophy who lives in Guyana.
Anyone who lives in Guyana and went through a couple of philosophy books, has to know what a morally and philosophically Faustian, Macbethian, and soulless society Guyana has become from the seventies onwards. I was fortunate to have been brought up in a Guyana where hope, joy and love existed among its citizens.
To see the transformation of this flower into miasma has to create sempiternal angst in those who once read Shakespeare, saw Long Day’s Journey into Night at the playhouse, read everything Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, listened to Motown and Burt Bacharach, studied at a fine university, and wallowed in the brightness of a secured future.
Guyana is one of Planet Earth’s most bestial jungles. I will have more to say about the denial of payment to 20 ordinary contractors by the Government of Guyana for work and material supplied to the D’Urban Park project, but that very government paid an outstanding debt of 5.7 million American dollars to one of the richest businessmen in Guyana. This very businessman is about to produce a daily newspaper. Maybe the money is to start a newspaper that will be in service to APNU and the AFC for the 2020 elections. Maybe we are seeing the beginning of the 2020 election campaign.
More on this repayment and the coming newspaper in future columns, but let’s get back to the personal journey of life that all humans have to experience and endure.
When I saw the list of defaulting lawyers, I thought of how personalized a life we live in this world. I paid for my daughter’s education at UG. And it is a silly piece of propaganda for anyone to accept that UG fees were $127,000 a year. I never paid $127,000. It was always much higher than that.
The personal comes in when you think of how harsh life is. Here are people that own multiple properties, drive expensive SUVs, belong to the middle and upper middle class brackets, yet refused to pay back monies owed to the State, while I, who served UG for 26 years, had to pay for my daughter’s education.
I will not dwell on the termination of my UG contract. Enough has been said about that. But when you throw that in the equation, then the personal journey of life becomes so obvious.
The list of defaulters only proves to every citizen in this land that Guyana does not have a moral conscience. Included on the document is a sitting magistrate. How can anyone dispense justice on a magisterial bench when that person took money as a loan and refuses to repay it?
It may not be a criminal offence, but it is a moral crime. When the document of debtors was published not one Government Minister, not one politician, asked the question as to how this lady can sit in judgement of others while she refuses to repay her loan to the people of Guyana.
On the contrary, many of those debtors are now receiving monies from the State itself for contracts given for various duties. So the defaulters are rewarded, while bread vendors’ livelihood was taken away from the Stabroek Market Square to make way for the float parade of the Golden Jubilee. Really! How can anyone who studies philosophy see any useful value in such a bestial society? I will not spend time here giving a lecture on why life is a personal trip for all humans. It should be fairly obvious to all those who live in the world that you cannot separate the personal from the formal in living every day. People would come to me and ask, “why me?”
When the PPP was in Government, the complaints I received about discrimination were endless. After I heard the details, I saw how potent the personal factor in life was for all of us. It is personal because you are a bread vendor and you are expendable. It is personal because you come from a culture that is not acceptable. It is personal because you do not have friends in the government. It is personal because you do not mix with the right crowd. It is personal because your personal standing in life makes you an inferior human.

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3 thoughts on “Life is and will always be a personal journey for everyone”

carl veecock July 17, 2016 at 10:34 pm

A moving article Freddie.

I suspect that there were tears in your eyes as you wrote and reread.
Why is your friend Benschop so quite these days?
Get him back into action Freddie.
19CAGriffith48 July 17, 2016 at 10:38 pm

“I was fortunate to have been brought up in a Guyana where hope, joy and love existed among its citizens.”

Say it again Frederick, say it again,my brother !
We were also fortunate in having the benefits of good training and great role models.
19CAGriffith48 July 18, 2016 at 1:12 pm

Thanks for recognizing and expressing the courage displayed by Frederick.

Your quote of JFK is an approved transcription in Latin and used with an insignia by members of the U.S.Irregular Army. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/303278d70b728eb94a04282e741adfa0642494194d9f9f54d2afb27d1633f70e.jpg

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