The disappointments were many last week

Nov 13, 2016 Features / Columnists, My Column

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The past week was full of talking points, none more than the shocking results of the elections in the United States. The campaign was hectic; the polls favoured the Democrats, largely because people believed that the utterances of the leading Republican candidate would be enough to ground him.
Right up to the poll count even the pollsters were certain that the Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton, would win. None bargained for the entrenched racism in the society. Also, none heeded the racist comments that formed the basis for the consolidated white vote that pushed the Republicans over the top.
I was shocked by the results. I believed that Hillary Clinton would win. Also shocked were the many who live in the Democrat states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. I spoke to my daughter who lives in New Jersey after the results were declared and she told me about travelling with a stunned crowd.
I know the subways and the public transport system. Except for the buses that run between New Jersey and New York, everywhere there is chatter on these forms of public transport. My daughter told me about the stunned silence of the passengers. Then she reminded me of something that she had experienced in Guyana. She said to me that she felt the same way she did in 1992 when the People’s Progressive Party came to office. I could relate to that feeling.
As I followed the developments, I saw the protests in a country in which people once criticized Guyanese for protesting the election results. In Guyana, we were accused of refusing to accept democracy; we were called all manner of names. The observer missions were not kind. Then I remembered former President Bharrat Jagdeo saying that his party accepted the results of the 2015 elections too easily.
The analysis of the American elections tells me that racism is entrenched. The racist attacks are increasing. People are actually talking their mind about how they feel about Black and Hispanic immigrants. They refuse to accept that these people help build their country, many taking jobs that the White Americans refuse. They also work for less.
Guyanese, for the greater part, expressed some worry at the results. Those who plan to visit the country now feel that they would be denied entry. They fear the racial profiling. I have not heard from the many who have gone to work and must face their white peers who now look at them with open dislike.
But that is America and as an adopted home for many, they must realize that they have to work to put food on the table. There will be some intolerance, but nothing like what happens in Guyana. The new government in 1992 came in with a vengeance and swept the public service. They reached out to victimize all those whom they thought were against them. I was one and I survived.
I remember Dr Roger Luncheon saying to me that I was lucky, that there were many who were left to beg their bread. I know some of these.
In America, the arms of the politicians are not so long, because most of the employers are private people who look for profits; who couldn’t care that much about the ethnic make-up of the employee.
The other talking point is disgusting. It involves a young man who I knew as a little boy in Beterverwagting, the village of my birth. I could not believe that a man who professes to be a man of the cloth would stoop to such a despicable level.
Sex was never a spectator sport and for a man to record himself having sex with his church members is something that defies logic. Some of these women had husbands. The recordings somehow reached the eyes of the public, and I can imagine the embarrassment of those women. Many of them now have broken lives, fashioned by the man who is supposed to offer them religious salvation.
His other followers have come to his defence in ways that I can understand. One person contended that he is a man, so he will do manly things. Having sex with multiple women and recording it is not manly in my opinion. If it were manly, then he would have faced the people; he would not have stayed away from his church and the flock. He would not have got a lawyer to talk for him. And to think that the lawyer would say that the sex was consensual so there was nothing wrong. But what about the Scriptures that talks about fornication and adultery?
What are the lessons for the young church members? Surely they would not be expected to engage every woman in the church. They will grow up without morals and all because of the leader of the church.
He, on the other hand, must now worry about returning to the United States. The Americans do not take kindly to people who commit acts of moral turpitude. I now await his attempt to visit America.
I can imagine this man lying in his bed and reviewing the tapes, even sharing them with whoever found it necessary to crawl into his bed. I could imagine these women looking at each other in the church.
I predict that the church will survive, simply because habits die hard; because people will always seek excitement. There will always be women who need easy money and if the church leader is going to be a source then so be it. But I pity those members who actually fund this man’s escapades. What’s in it for them?

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