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What do you do with 19 years of your life?

Aug 10, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is no other country with the negatives that run through the bloodstream of a country like Guyana. Quite often (certainly not occasionally) people would tell me I am too focused on the negatives of Guyana. In fact, a very good friend of mine told me that just the other day. We were travelling down to Georgetown from Berbice after attending Leonard Craig’s wedding reception in Berbice. He is one of the second-tier leaders of the AFC.
I knew where he was coming from. His future is in politics. One day he hopes to be in a political position to make policies for Guyana. I have no political ambition. I am a critical academic and that is what I will always be. We see life in Guyana from different angles. I emphasise the negatives because I believe countries should not have these things. They make people unhappy. They psychologically disturb people. They depress a county’s citizens.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind, and I am unshakeable in my belief, that several UG students over the past two decades committed suicide because the rut of UG was too much for them to bear. I know of one such case on the West Bank of Demerara. UG’s dysfunction made the life of the student unbearable. He was just 18 years. I saw students cry in the registration line, because they couldn’t get a change of course approved before the deadline, as there was no one available to sign their form. I taught at UG for 26 years and I saw what it did to the psyche of very young people.
How could you tell me I shouldn’t criticize a country that makes its citizens unhappy humans? Just look at what happened last week. I rushed home to see the beginning of the knockout section of the Caribbean Premier League. It began at 7 p.m. It was 20 minutes past six and there was a Bank of Nova Scotia programme in progress. There was no cricket. I went downstairs and told my wife cricket was at 8 p.m. In fact the cricket began at 7 p.m. But NCN was not showing it because of a break in signal and didn’t have the commonsense, yes, the commonsense, to run a continuous strip saying there was a break in transmission. Even after the bank programme was concluded they didn’t run the strip. They did so 40 minutes after.
I ask readers in all truthfulness if that was not a complete lack of commonsense. Here is what happened a few days ago. GPL’s commercial manager once told me that customers have an obligation to check with GPL rather than rely exclusively on a post office bill. He had a point there. So you can dial a number and get your bill information. My billing dictates that I pay on the first of each month. Since I didn’t get a post office bill, I dialed the GPL bill inquiry line.
You can ask my wife; for hours that number was engaged. I went to the SurePay booth at the supermarket and paid an amount that would cover my monthly kilowatts. So you didn’t get a post office bill that GPL sends out and GPL’s bill inquiry number was not helpful. This is what I mean by the unhappiness created by the country you live in. Think of what our older folks have to go through. They cannot hop into a car and drive down to SurePay as I did.
I come now to the caption above of this column. A cyclist was knocked down by a GuySuCo truck and he sued for damages. He got judgement of $5 million last week. Do you know when he first sued? It was nineteen years ago. Does it make sense if you are 60 years old to sue for redress in the courts of Guyana and the process takes two decades to complete?
The cyclist suffered serious limb injuries at the time. But he would have had to find money for 19 years to spend recuperating. Just suppose he was 60 at the time, he would have been awarded compensation when he was 80. But maybe given his injuries, he may not have survived to reach 80.
These are the negatives that characterize the ontology of this country. How could any human tolerate and accept the nature of such a country? The libel case where then President Jagdeo sued me and the Kaieteur News started in July 2011. This is August 2016, and the end of that trial is nowhere in sight.

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