An oxymoronic moment in 2016

Jan 22, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I appreciated deeply, the offer to serve Guyana by being part of the National Commemoration Commission – to plan and shape the celebration of the 50 years of Independence last year. But at the same time, I was disappointed that given my philosophical views, such an offer could have been made in the first place. I couldn’t bring myself to be part of that organization, because deep down I felt there was hardly anything to celebrate.
The Guyanese people, from the standpoint of being human, are not different from all the other nationalities of the world. We have our great sides, not so great sides, soulful sides, bad sides, primitive habits, blunted instincts, progressive conceptualization, friendly dispositions, just like any other nation. In the realm of psychology, Guyanese are a problematic species, but that is not the subject of this column, so I will move on.
Guyana in totality has not travelled far and has in fact retrogressed. It is against the background of this conscious knowledge of our failure that I could not – for both philosophical and psychological reason – be part of the planning of the Golden Jubilee. When I got the invitation, I immediately asked myself that banal question that, perhaps, was natural from a cynical mind like mine – celebrate what?
I would describe myself as a radical, existentialist anarchist. Please do not debase the term, “anarchism.” It has no connection to the word, “anarchy.” Anarchism is a philosophical school of thought that argues that power, and by extension the authority it brings into being, is inherently flawed, and it destroys the natural humaneness that comes from our existentialist ontology. Anarchism then argues that no matter how good is the intention, the possession of power leads the mind astray.
I have watched all my life how power has destroyed Guyana. How power took the place of patriotism and nationalism, and progress, and a modern future got sacrificed in the brutal pursuit of this lust. It was pointless, then, to ask someone like me to be part of the National Commemoration Commission.
In our long journey of 50 years, I do not see progress but failure. If you want you can classify me as a sempiternal pessimist but from my vantage point, I did not see a developing Guyana and I do not see a bright future, oil or no oil. Oil may very well deepen the fanaticism of power.
When I was asked to serve on the Commission, it was natural to let one’s memory roam over those 50 years. It was not an inviting journey. I saw 50 years of a nation’s jaded psychology and faded physiology. Here I was being asked to serve in an organization whose specific purpose was to highlight what we achieved the past 50 years. I saw non-achievement instead.
This country is not for the faint-hearted. I worked at the University of Guyana for 26 consecutive years, and I put my integrity on the line when I say that as each year passed by, I saw the deepening of decline, not the expansion of achievement. My 26 years ended in 2012 and up to that point I never had a telephone in my office and that was so for a majority of lecturers.
The centrepiece of the Golden Jubilee I had moral and political objection to – the construction of D’Urban Park. If a rich country like Qatar, Brunei, or Saudi Arabia had built that site for Guyana as a gift, I could have lived with that. But we took more than a billion dollars to build what I profoundly believe was not necessary; was a waste of money. It was money that could have been used for the eradication of poverty. It sickened me to the core of my soul when I saw the conditions of the toilet of a public school that was carried in this newspaper that children of a certain part of the interior had to use. This was happening in a country 50 years after Independence.
I mentioned this thing with the National Commemoration Commission because I am in the process, as most columnists do, of looking back at 2016. I have done several columns last week and the week before reflecting on Guyana in 2016. If you read them you would know I didn’t find life in 2016 enthralling.
I will end on a note that is utterly confusing to me. Go back 10 years ago and you will read of people being robbed as they left the bank. It hasn’t not stop since then. It happened again three days ago. What changes for the better in Guyana?

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An oxymoronic moment in 2016

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