Latest update February 25th, 2025 10:18 AM
Feb 26, 2017 Features / Columnists, My Column
People always welcome a new lease on life. I remember meeting Odinga Lumumba in hospital a few years ago after he had been involved in a horrific accident. His driver crashed the vehicle and I am willing to swear that Mr. Lumumba saw death. When I met him in the Intensive Care Unit of the Georgetown Public Hospital he was in pain, but thankful to be alive. There and then he told me that he was turning to the Lord, that he was going to become a born again Christian.
Perhaps he is but then again, old habits die hard, because I have seen him going about his life in pretty much the same way he did prior to his accident.
He is not the only one to see the light after a horrific experience. A few years ago I happened to be chatting with a doctor about the AIDS situation in Guyana. The doctor described it as horrific and horrifying. He said that too many people were being afflicted with the virus for which there is no known cure.
He then said something stunning to me. He said that the church has the highest percentage of AIDS victims. This merely means that the afflicted person believes that he or she is close to death and that he or she would use the remaining days to be good people. I would suppose that all of them then turn to the Lord beseeching him to cure them in one way or the other. They would also promise to avoid the same mistake.
But not everyone is of that mould. I read about criminals who would step out of jail only to return. There are people who have been shot only to put themselves in the position to be shot again. This does not make sense. There is the old adage that one should not make the same mistake twice but then again, this may only apply to some of us. A careless road user is less likely to be as careless if he gets involved in an accident.
However, in the courts at this time is a young man who reportedly killed three people on the roadways in Berbice in separate incidents. He is of a different mould and perhaps would remain one of the incorrigible few.
These past few weeks I have seen people in the protest line, fighting against the parking meters in the city. These people have come out in their numbers in the broiling sun. Some of them have never been known to protest, perhaps afraid of the then administration. To them, talk of democracy and the right to protest did not matter, but today they are not afraid to come out on the streets.
One young man actually said to me that people have found their voice and they are not about to lose it. This says a lot about the Guyana in which we now live. It also says a lot about the politics of the land. These are people who are calling on the government to intervene, although the government has said repeatedly that the City Council is an independent body and not an arm of the government.
This seems to say that the government is the controller of everything in Guyana. Perhaps people cannot understand that there are things over which the government should have no control. This is the case in the metropolis. The Mayor of New York is a powerhouse who does not need to listen to the President.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani was a powerful man, powerful enough to order the release of a man who was detained by the immigration for returning to New York. This man was sixteen when he had sex with a girl of fifteen. He was charged with statutory rape and penalized.
Nineteen years later he travelled to his native Dominican Republic and was returning when he was detained. There were the protests and for seven months the man languished in the detention centre. In the end, Mayor Giuliani ordered his release and no government could stop him. In Guyana, the protest would have been directed at the government.
I have not seen any, but I have heard of posting on social media that I have been paid by Smart City Solutions, simply because I chose to interview the main players in the parking meter issue. No one can say that I professed any support for the project. Instead I asked the questions that are being asked, but my presence at the interview was enough to make people arrive at whatever conclusion they chose.
Many people the world over have said that if everyone was of the same mind, then the world would be a boring place. In that stream there is a government and an opposition, supporters and opponents. The list goes on. Some of us support the death penalty and others don’t.
There was a bitter protest when the government sought to legalise abortions. The churches held one view. In the end the National Assembly voted to legalise abortions, but there was a caveat. Public institutions that relied on public funds could not perform them. These institutions could only get involved in cases of complications arising from the abortion process.
It was the same with the Bill that sought to give rights to people of varying sexual orientations. In the National Assembly there was a conscience vote—people did not have to vote along party lines. The Bill was passed, but the then President, Bharrat Jagdeo, perhaps out of fear of the opponents, never assented to that Bill.
I have no problem with the parking meters, because I hate having to drive around looking for parking and sometimes having to park illegally, hoping that I do not get towed. Some may say that I can afford it, but I don’t think this has anything to do with money. Most people who earn lower down the scale would be seen spending a few hundred dollars a day on meals rather than cooking at home and taking their food along.
One of my colleagues said that it is a matter of choice, and I agree. Let me spend my money on what I choose.
I mentioned some time ago that many of us would give $100 to a beggar without blinking, but would refuse to pay that same sum for a half hour parking, complaining that it is exorbitant. I know that people from out of town, from places like West Berbice don’t mind the parking meters.
And those businessmen who say that the meters have led to a decline of between 40 per cent and fifty per cent in their businesses may not be telling the truth. With such losses they would have closed their doors.
Suffice it to say that if I have to pay to park, then there must be the requisite security for my vehicle. And this cannot be assured, because I have parked and not paid because there was no one to catch me. If you can’t see me park, then you can’t guarantee me security.
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