Will we acquire a heart and a soul in 2017?

Jan 04, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I think most people tend to read the year in review in most countries. One needs to be reminded about what went on the past year. Then we may have missed out on a few events so the year in review makes up for that. After completing the Kaieteur News version, I went to see what the Stabroek News was like. An item caught my eye.
It listed a Guyanese family business that recently bought a 20-acre property from Caribbean Resource Limited for US$20 million to take advantage of the coming oil boom. The company said it has already spent US$10 million developing the property. That means, the company has spent US$30 million so far. The very Stabroek News that reported this investment published a letter signed by some employees stating that the company required the employees in its downtown supermarket and hardware business to buy their own toilet paper and hand soap.
When that letter was published and it failed to attract the revulsion of this nation, I was deeply disgusted with what this country had become. Even if the family business saw nothing wrong with this sick policy, surely this is not the kind of behaviour modern society tolerates. To think that this enterprise could invest US$30 million but demand their store employees purchase their own toilet paper for use in the washrooms at their work place is beyond belief.
My deeply felt belief is that only in Guyana would you find such employers; only in Guyana would there be total silence over this abomination.
When I read that letter I made a pledge to myself, a pledge I will keep to the day I die; I will never buy anything from that store. I haven’t named the store although it was named in the letter that Stabroek News published. To shut me up from ever writing on this repulsion again, I could well receive a libel writ. That is the way it goes in Guyana. We are a country where even thieves and rapists sue for libel.
Do you know that a citizen of this country was jailed in the US for visa fraud committed in Guyana and charged with attempted murder after the victim survived seven bullet wounds, and that man sued the publisher of this newspaper in connection with an unrelated matter. A man with a criminal past sues. I guess he thinks he has a character to protect.
If the insanities like the toilet paper controversy should come up in a different form in 2017, will we Guyanese as human beings have the moral decency, the basic decency as humans to just voice a disagreement? Are there not things happening in this country that are vexations to the essence of one’s soul that we should speak out against them? Aren’t we as Guyanese made of flesh, bones and mental stuff?
If we are, how could we not just utter one single word of rejection of behaviour that is philistine, uncivilized and bestial in the land we live in?
Are we so heartless that we could see lovely dogs being seized at Eugene Correia Airport and there and then put to death, and we cannot muster a little bravery to give off a tiny voice of condemnation? Has this county lost its collective soul or is it that it never had one? We did.
I lived in a time in my country when we had a collective conscience. I heard a dog screaming on the UG campus when I was a student during one of my classes. Students and lecturer ran out and saw a guard hitting the dog. Everyone was mad at that man. He got a severe tongue-lashing.
When I was young, I saw on Cummings Street, a small boy running wildly. He pushed down an old Amerindian woman and didn’t stop. Angry citizens just grabbed him and roughed him up. I lived in an era when doctors were like angels. The way they spoke to you made you feel better immediately. Today, many doctors have an unacceptable attitude.
That was the time I lived in. That was what my fellow citizens were like. But let me finish with one sad observation.
For three consecutive years, I stood and watched what type of motorists would stop and patronize the masquerade bands as they gyrate in front of the vehicles. Really, the heart and soul of this nation have died. Will we reclaim humanity in 2017? Ask me for my answer.

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One thought on “Will we acquire a heart and a soul in 2017?”

Pam January 4, 2017 at 5:05 pm

No Freddie! We can reclaim those values only when we choose that kind and quality of leadership in Guyana…..which ,from all observation is almost non-existing in the Guyanese society. Laws that must also be enforced to replace the ruthless,callous, dishonest,criminal nature of the new Guyanese culture…..since Burnham and Jagan screwed up and willfully demolished those values which are so fundamental to the structure of a civilized and developing society. Stop calling them elites…….they don’t even have the values of ‘middle class’.

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