It is not ambiguity or confusion but mystery

Feb 02, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Dr. David Hinds, in an interview with this newspaper, wrote that there is ambiguity in how the Government approaches employment of people getting on in age. This is because people going on to advanced age are employed while others with the same age are not or if they are still in the public sector, they are asked to leave. Hinds calls this ambiguity. For me this is just one more example of the huge mysterious shroud that this government wears.
The PPP regime was funny. Rohee as Minister was the funniest guy in the entire world. “Killamaan Lall” made you laugh. Satyra Gyaal stole the show at the American Ambassador’s house. But we have moved from a laughable group to a mysterious one.
The inscrutable operations of the Coalition Government also have their funny side. If you Google it, you’ll see a picture of a Minister with long boots surrounded by his aides looking at a collapsed mining pit where several miners died.
The caption listed the Minister as Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine and has him as the Minister of Natural Resources. Within days a Cabinet reshuffle occurred and Roopnaraine became Education Minister. It was the only time a government anywhere in the world had a Cabinet reshuffle and it was never announced.
The publisher of this newspaper, Glenn Lall, in my presence countless times said that journalists in Guyana are not thinking enough and that the journalistic community can provide a better service to this country.
Not even one journalist has ever asked the President or Roopnaraine why he was at that mining pit in the capacity of Minister of Natural Resources as reported in the press. Even if the press got his portfolio wrong then what was the Minister of Education doing with employees of the Ministry of Natural Resources visiting a caved-in pit rather than the shoddy school at Kato? Glenn Lall is right, the goldfields that Guyanese journalists do not want to walk on, their international counterparts would sleep on.
During the local government elections, Raphael Trotman, at a public meeting told the attendees that when the election results were declared, David Granger called him and said, “Raphael, this is Nassau” referring to a conversation about political strategy he had with Mr. Granger years ago when they were at the airport in the Bahamas.
To this day, despite a planned, weekly meeting with selected members of the media, not one journalist has put on his/her thinking cap to ask the President if he would care to comment on what “Nassau” means. The President may say it that he does not think it is important to discuss but ask him nevertheless.
I don’t know why David calls it ambiguity. It is pure mystery for me, the way this government operates. Minister Simona Broomes became an overnight sensation with her human rights crusades. If there is anything this wretched, failed country needs is a human rights tsar, a genuine human rights movement.
Simona Broomes performed that function as Junior Minister of Social Protection. Then mystery stepped in.
Broomes turned up at a place where any sensible government would not have sent her. As someone connected with ownership in the mining industry, why give her a portfolio for that industry when enviable, mischievous people could make unfavourable comments about conflict of interest. But the inscrutable government did it. Why? Well ambiguity, enigma and mystery have no explanation.
So what is going to happen is that while the adjective of funny was pinned on the previous regime, the current one has earned the appellation of mysterious. Tell me if the following isn’t a puzzle.
We had a Ministry of Public Works. It is a simple, understandable name. Someone fond of riddles, changed “Works” to “Infrastructure.” Here is where the puzzle becomes funny. When the Hymac with the driver digs up a road to allow a water pipe to be laid, isn’t that public works going on? For “donkey” years generations of Guyanese were born knowing we have a Ministry of Health. Puzzles and riddles stepped in and the name is now Ministry of Public Health.
Here is where that name change is dangerous. An innocent citizen or maybe a naïve one can think that the State cannot touch an erring nurse or incompetent doctor at a private hospital or that private hospitals are independent of the Medical Council.
Let me end on a mysterious yet funny note – I heard that the new names will be the Guyana Public Police Force and Guyana Public Defence Force. Strange country, isn’t it? But it still makes you laugh.

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