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Berbicians love their own version of Donald Trump

Mar 08, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Almost ninety-nine percent of the people who listened to Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar at Port Mourant last Sunday in commemoration of Cheddi Jagan’s death anniversary would have wished Hillary Clinton to win over Trump, because of Trump’s views on non-white immigration. Here is a piece of news that has not been reported.
The US Embassy has cancelled about three dozen visitors’ visas of Guyanese whom they suspect to have used their visas to work in the US, and returned only to have repeated the pattern over and over.
When I saw some of the names I laughed. I wasn’t surprised to see who they were, meaning from which demography they came. I saw those names days before Jagdeo addressed his gathering. I wonder if those that sat in the audience and listened as Jagdeo lied to them are happy at what Trump is doing. But I wonder in the minds of that Port Mourant audience last Sunday if Trump is a bad president. If the answer is yes, why wasn’t Jagdeo a bad president?
The report in the newspapers said Jagdeo’s speech was given wide applauses. Life is a bittersweet fruit. This was the man who wrecked the sugar industry with the Skeldon factory, but Berbicians are rooting for him. I wonder, I really wonder if Granger says, ‘alright Berbicians I am going to subsidize the sugar industry’, will he get their votes in 2020?
In 2020, I do believe Trump’s America will disappear and those voters in Ohio and elsewhere will leave Trump. Trump cannot bring back the industries and jobs in the South that he promised. Trump will fall in 2020 because white voters who wanted him to put white first will turn against him. They may even vote for a non-white presidential candidate.
Sadly, long after Trump is gone, Jagdeo will be waxing lyrical in Berbice about his non-existent record and the cheers, as they did last Sunday, will reverberate throughout Berbice. This is the extent to which Guyana is psychologically frightening.
This is the man who banned the ferries and built a bridge with pensioners’ money in the NIS and commuters’ fare became a nightmare. Today, you can cross the river with a paid speedboat which was outlawed in Jagdeo’s time, yet the cheers were loud as he spoke last Sunday. Every time I go to Berbice, I get at least one complaint from a sugar worker about his pension which he cannot get. I wonder if such pensioners were in the audience clapping.
Were there persons in that audience who gyrated with adulation when Jagdeo spoke last Sunday who had to travel to Georgetown to submit their passport application and had to wait five hours? I’m sure, there were. Were there persons among the well-wishers who came from Black Bush Polder?
The Granger/Nagamootoo administration is making mistakes, but it wasn’t under their rule that Guyana became the suicide capital of the world. Guyana’s acquired that infamy from Black Bush Polder. The last time I checked, Black Bush Polder was in Berbice, right in the county of Berbice where last Sunday, Jagdeo regaled his audience with denunciations of a government that is less than two years’ old. Jagdeo’s rule lasted fifteen years.
It would have been intriguing to ask each person at that event last Sunday how did their wellbeing fare from 1999 to May 2015 when Jagdeo ruled Guyana. How fascinating it would be to hear the answers from sugar workers and unemployed youths. They say people’s memories are short. If your memory is short, then, you are dancing with the Devil, because once you do not remember the past, it will come back to destroy you.
The textbook on politics instructs you that once a leader is terrible, and a nation forgets his misdeeds, and votes him in again, his misdeeds, will multiply. It will multiply because the leader tells himself that he cannot be a bad man yet win his country’s support. We saw this with our politics in Georgetown. A candidate that didn’t perform in the City Council for over 20 years won the mayorship in 2016. She told herself she couldn’t be an incompetent performer all those years yet won the mayorship.
Maybe Georgetowners are like Berbicians. Maybe Georgetowners and Berbicians are like other Guyanese – a nation that thrives on its own self-destruction. Maybe Georgetowners deserve their mayor and Berbicians deserve their Jagdeo. The losers, of course, are the people of Guyana. But since when have the people of Guyana ever been winners. Maybe they will become winners when oil money comes. I am not too sure.

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