Confronting the continuing violations in Guyana in 2017

Jan 08, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Most rational minds will express a feeling of wanting to change life for the better as the aging process comes into being. There is this feeling that though you cannot live forever, you should try to leave the world with something that will. That is what aging does. It drives into your psychology the drama that the curtains are drawing. Then reflections, dreams and passions take over. The pursuit becomes relentless that you must do something good for those who are left to live in a world of uncertainties. But most of all, try to change the world so those uncertainties will not rule and ruin the lives of those you left behind.
Guyana is a special theatre of melancholy that sets it apart from the rest of the world. I have always pontificated with friends when we polemicize informally that for me, the two enduring tragedies of the 20th century are Guyana and Russia. Never mind its painful past of genocide, Rwanda will move on and its people will be joyful achievers. While Rwanda moves on, the peoples of Russia and Guyana will continue to live in the only world they have ever known – the receding hope of a freer tomorrow.
It is outside of the scope of a column to describe this ontology of Russia that makes it an ongoing European tragedy, but Russians will for a long time remain people who will look inwards and have to accept that perhaps Hobbes’ Leviathan is the only form of government they will get for a long time to come. Far from Russia is Guyana. The difference is the gloom that the cold brings in Russia. Here the sun shines deeply into the hearts of the trees that dot the roadways in what was once referred to as the Garden City of the West Indies.
The sun gives way to the nightly Atlantic breeze; young and old savour its moments, but perhaps that is all we can savour – the inviting sun and the breezy nocturnal ambience that the mighty Atlantic endows us with. Malls, cinemas, midnight bacchanals, food courts, high-rise buildings will continue to spread in 2017, so will misery. I am under no illusion that in this, a brand new year, democracy, liberties, justice and equal access to Guyana’s cake will be a mirage.
I am under no illusion that justice in 2017 will continue to elude people that have no money to buy it. I am under no illusion that in 2017 people who are in advanced age will die without getting a settlement from their court litigation that they started ten years ago. This is not only a melancholic land, but a funny one that makes you laugh, and that laugh actually suppresses the angst in Guyanese citizens.
A man brought nuff money to West Indian cricket. His name was Allen Stanford. The US charged him with Ponzi fraud. Stanford’s case went right up to a US Court of Appeals. It is finished. He will spend the rest of his life in jail. In the US with over 300 million people, the case is over.
In Guyana with a mere, I repeat, a mere 700,000 persons, both civil and criminals cases initiated over a dozen years ago are still to be completed. I woke up one morning in 2016 and found a note in my mailbox. I had to attend court over a libel Dr. Walter Ramsahoye filed in 2002. May I remind you that was 14 years ago. My witnesses have all left Guyana since then. How can any tiny populated country like Guyana have such a caricatured justice system?
I am getting on in age, and I want to leave something for the people who will inherit this barren land. They are entitled to it. That something is purposeful change. There are horrible violations that smother the people of this country; these abominations must be confronted. Early in this year, I want to test in court the requirement that once you leave an interior location in Guyana and land in Region Four at the Eugene Correia Airport, you have to go through customs.
Why do interior residents have to endure this? You can travel from Region Two into Region Three into Region Four, go up to Region 10 then head back to Region Four and pass through Region Five and end up in Region Six, and you don’t have to go through customs.
I am bent on confronting these violations in my country this year. I am not a supporter of any party, and King Kong ain’t got no dirt on me, so I intend to leave something in 2017.

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Confronting the continuing violations in Guyana in 2017

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