Listening to Gail Teixeira is not for the faint-hearted

Feb 01, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Leonard Gildharie was listening to Gail Teixeira’s parliamentary speech on Monday, and I was right next to him. I then turned to him and said that if someone came from another planet and heard Teixeira’s condemnation of goods that were VAT exempted but now carry the tax, they would never believe that this lady and her party ran Guyana for twenty-three years.
Listening to the lady was unbearable. It was not her condemnation of the VAT on items that previously were VAT-free but the exclamations that punctuated her speech.
On the imposition of VAT on educational materials, she yelled out; “How can you do this to poor people?” The Teixeira sermon was about the mistreatment of the poorer classes. But it was this very lady’s government that birthed VAT and initially put it on every conceivable item that was essential for the diet of the poor. One recalls, Guyanese woman icon, Andaiye writing a letter to the press expressing her indignation of VAT on eggs and bread.
With the exception of bread, every other bread product like tennis rolls, butter-flaps, coconut rolls, sweet bread, and pastries carry VAT. I don’t support the new broad categories of items that now carry VAT and for which poor people will feel the burden and for which the Coalition will pay a heavy price at the 2019 local government elections and 2020 national elections.
My point is that the PPP leadership has no moral authority, no moral right to speak about the worsening economic conditions of the poor.
What is playing out in this country is so bizarre that it is incomprehensible. In the raging dispute over the ownership and function of Red House, what was never brought out was the PPP’s attitude to the location of the 1832 slave rebellion monument. Without exception, all African-rights organizations were angry that the Parade Ground was overlooked. It is there that the captured slaves were brutally tortured and put to death.
This was a terrible moment in the misuse of power under the PPP for which they should not be forgiven. This monument was not the business of East Indians, Amerindians or Chinese Guyanese or Guyanese of European descent. It concerned the descendants of the slaves who came to Guyana. They should have been the ones to decide where they wanted the structure to be placed in honour of their ancestors.
In what can only be described as insane abuse of power, the PPP Government arrogated to itself the right to make decisions on the culture and history of other communities of Guyana. Today the monument lies in a disgraceful condition on the old seawall road not far from the Kitty pump station. Every Sunday night there are huge bacchanalian abandonments on the seawall road and the next day, the monument is a mountain of garbage.
During the week, homeless people invade it and make it their permanent cocoon. The grassy parapets surrounding the monument haven’t seen the grass-cutter’s hands in ages.
This was how the PPP ruled Guyana. This sad mistreatment of a part of Guyanese history is not important to the PPP but Red House is. There is an oceanic outburst of indignity from the PPP about Red House coming under control of the Government. What was never given the exposure that it should have were the insults heaped upon the legacies of Presidents Burnham and Hoyte in the PPP’s rejection of the suggestion that the Red House be used as a library of past presidents.
The PPP issued a statement saying that it was totally unacceptable to have the names of Burnham and Hoyte lying next to that of Cheddi Jagan at Red House. The statement went on to say that it was contamination (PPP’s word) of the name and legacy of Cheddi Jagan to have those two presidents’ papers in the same house with those of Jagan.
But it was alright to insult half of the population of Guyana by putting the 1823 monument on the grass on the seawall road.
Listening to Gail Teixeira so-called protection of the poorer classes in that speech in Parliament made me both disgusted and angry and I told Leonard Gildharie how sick the PPP is. What is playing out in Guyana is eerie and macabre. It is as if the PPP is asserting their angelic portfolio. In real life that portfolio was demonic.
It is so sad that the continuous mistakes of the hapless government of the APNU-AFC have allowed the PPP to catch a lifeline. Each day the blunders of the government allow PPP leaders to fool the Guyanese people. History is crying!

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Listening to Gail Teixeira is not for the faint-hearted

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