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Please Mr. Thompson; I’m not a one-man army!

Feb 27, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is a letter by someone named Gary Thompson in yesterday’s Kaieteur News lamenting the continuing lackluster and disappointing performance of the Coalition Government. The writer intoned; “Where are the voices of dissent and accountability, the voices claiming to represent the people, those voices that were so loud when the coalition was in the opposition? Eric Phillips has gone silent, he is on the government’s payroll, David Hinds is at best nuanced, he too is on the government’s payroll, Freddie Kissoon has written a few articles but seems much more concerned with psychoanalyzing the PPP. He has resorted to doing exactly what he berated Ravi Dev for doing when the PPP was in power, ‘fiddling while Rome burns’”.
I don’t know what Mr. Thompson means by a few articles. I do a daily column and from the time the new regime came into being in May 2015 to this date, I have done dozens of articles that were critical of terrible decisions and decisions that were also silly and laughable, poor planning, unacceptable pronouncements, double standards, cruel policies, questionable intentions of the Coalition Government. I like to emphasize for Mr. Thompson’s education, these were not a few articles but dozens.
Let me beat my drum Mr. Thompson, because in this country, filled with narrow-minded, selfish, poisonous people named Guyanese, no one is going to beat it for you. I was the only person as soon as the APNU+AFC got into office to denounce the ruling party for retaining the barriers around Parliament Building and even going far beyond the PPP’s style, when the PPP was in power and extending those barricades to include more space adjacent to Parliament. I stood alone and warned my country that this little betrayal (betrayal in the sense that APNU and AFC when in opposition voted in a successful motion to remove the steel cordons), was an indication that this government would not be democratic.
Here is some education for you, Mr. Thompson. I was the only living Guyanese that alerted his country to the fact that the APNU+AFC administration had refused to name the company that it birthed and was collecting money to build a wasteful project called D’Urban Park. The evidence is in my column of Monday, May 9, 2016. It carries the headline, “Ghost company, ghost donors in a ghost country.”
I wrote; “A company has been formed to landscape and build the pivotal Golden Jubilee celebration site named the Durban Park project. Old habits never die in the land of ghosts first known as British Guiana now Guyana. No one knows the name of this company. This entity’s main role is to receive money from business firms and rich individuals to build the Durban Park project, but like the ghost company, the givers of money are also ghosts. No one knows who they are. Unless the Government names the company, it remains a secret. Unless the donors identity themselves, they remain ghosts.”
I honestly believe, Mr. Thompson, that this government has lost its way. Where it goes from here I don’t know. I wish it well and would like it to succeed but as my mom and your mom used to say, that is like ‘throwing water pun duck back.” There are too many mistakes being made. But let me get back to Thompson’s criticism of me. What does Thompson want me to do? I am not a one-man army. I do throw in my little penny and I will continue to do so. I joined the anti-parking meter protest for three of the four times it was held; rain stopped me on the last occasion.
I will willingly join a demonstration to protest the continuation of Royston King and the Mayor in office. I would picket the government any time of the day on any day to demand modern changes in the marijuana laws. If there is a good third party with good people that I trust, I will campaign for them on the condition that they part company with neoliberal economics and have a pro-working class agenda.
It is clear from Thompson’s letter that he is disappointed in my activism since May 2015, but I re-emphasize that I am not a one-man army. I have tried. I will keep trying but I am getting older and I want to live out my years with my family, pets and my music. I have really tried to change my country for the better, Mr. Thompson. I gave it my best shot. Maybe there is only so much one person can do.

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