There isn’t and cannot be another country like Guyana

Jan 01, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Many of us who studied history still cannot understand why the German people allowed Hitler to move from one destructive act to another, to the point where Hitler took over Germany completely. If you lived in Guyana the past forty years, it’s easy to comprehend the story of the hopeless, helpless German people. If a smart, charismatic leader in Guyana wants to become a narcissistic Leviathan, there is the likelihood he can succeed.
The problem with psychology is once it is battered, it loses the capacity to differentiate and distinguish. A tattered psychology simply loses its control over its cognitive power. What happens then is that the mind becomes moulded to what it has been accustomed to over a long period of time. Ambitious leaders with totalitarian instincts then easily take over. Guyanese have a moribund psychology and therefore they become resigned to what is and not what should be. They do not know what is right from wrong.
Leaders then become oblivious to the suffering of their subjects. I saw an episode during 2016 Emancipation that strongly indicates that this nation will forever be a lost horizon. The night before Emancipation, the village of Hopetown holds a dusk to dawn celebration called soiree. Soiree was in full swing and the revellers were on each side of the road so traffic could flow. Some Ministers going to Georgetown stopped in the middle of the road and began to mingle with the participants. Dozens and dozens of vehicles going to the lower East Coast and Georgetown were stranded.
I am not afraid of jail, I am not afraid of any government, I am not afraid of any big and bad police officer. I got out of the car driven by AFC official Trevor Williams, and demanded that we pass. Those drivers just stayed in their vehicles resigned to what their country is. They didn’t allow us to pass because it was Freddie Kissoon asking. It was because they were afraid of the press coverage. In 2017, Guyanese should hope the press remains alive.
I saw this resignation as 2016 was about to end. I found myself in the midst of the vulgar, barren land this country is. It was December 30 at 3.30 p.m. I found myself on a street I do not take when I go to Kaieteur News. And this was because my wife wanted green mangoes to make sour. I wasn’t going into town, so Bourda Market was out. The only option was the Kitty roadside market. After that, I travelled south on Alexander Street in Kitty, turned west into Sandy Babb Street to go south on Vlissengen Road. But the insane country was waiting for us, hopeless, helpless Guyanese.
The Ministry of Public Infrastructure blocked off Vlissengen Road, south of Sandy Babb Street, all the way to Lamaha Street, to resurface the road. Words cannot describe the disaster that this stupidity caused. Why do this, at this time of the year when the traffic is utterly chaotic?
I rang Minister David Patterson and asked him how his ministry could do this. I asked him why it could not wait just two days when the holiday traffic eased up. I asked him what kind of DNA he has and his fellow Ministers.
I rang the Traffic Chief, complained to him about what Patterson’s Ministry did and requested that he send a rank to restore civilization. I felt sorry for a woman with a baby. I think she was crying, maybe out of fear that her car would be hit and her baby could be injured. The day before, December 29, I waited for half an hour in the traffic at North Road and Orange Walk. There was no traffic cop to do the commonsensical thing.
I rang the Traffic Chief but when he came on the line, I was so disgusted with what my country is that I politely made the excuse that I was using my cell phone and I preferred to talk to him on my land line. Commonsense can tell any human in Guyana that traffic ranks have to go out in the streets and regulate the mad traffic jams. But commonsense normally fails us in Guyana.
How could the Ministry, given the vehicular chaos all over Georgetown for the holiday season, do such an asinine thing at Sandy Babb Street and Vlissengen Road? How could policy-makers be so inhuman? On the day school reopened after the long August break, I saw that very Ministry creating traffic insanity by painting signs on the roads on the very afternoon that classes were over. Can this country be saved? I honestly doubt it.

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