Fate can deal one a mercilessly cruel hand

Mar 12, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I read that a prisoner lost one of his hands a week before he was due to be released. He was sentenced to two six-month stints to run consecutively, meaning he spent a year. The charge was simple larceny. He lost his hand in a cement mixer. Life can be really cruel. You read the newspapers and you see what a sanatorium of psychological miasma this country is and will continue to be.
One of the persons I have known a long time at Kaieteur News told me she was annoyed at a column of mine last week, captioned, “Living in Guyana is a living hell.” She saw it as a running down of Guyana. The next day, I was a guest of Stan Gouveia, on his radio programme, “The Hot Seat,” on Hits and Jam Radio, and I repeated my overall assessment of my country as a place of extreme nihilism.
Just to repeat it in case you didn’t get it, “my country.” The county in which I have lived all my life, married a Guyanese woman, fathered a Guyanese child, only have a Guyanese passport and gave 26 years to public service, meaning, working for the State. My country in which the physical, political and legal violations I have endured are countless.
There was an interesting emanation from Stan Gouveia just before we went on air. I asked him if the only job he has is at the radio station; he said yes. Then I said that the NCN has an obligation to him for what the PPP Government did to him when they dismissed him from NCN Radio for refusing to preach PPP propaganda. Stan laughed and spoke of how flippant a minister had been to him a few weeks ago. His customary smile turned into a serious visage when he intoned; “where was this woman when we were fighting for change?”
I hear that sentiment all the time and when I do, like Stan, my visage turns formidable too.
So what has this discussion got to do with the opening line of this article and the column my Kaieteur News colleague didn’t like? The connection is that the prisoner’s sentence and Stan’s reaction are the reasons I describe my country as a living hell. Admitting that you cannot steal your neighbour’s property, these petty thieves have their lives ruined while the sharks murder their neighbour, steal millions from their neighbour, and are treated as untouchables and when people like Stan speak, ministers are insulting. Stan called the name of the minister who behaved like that and I can tell the nation she was non-existent or was a no-show during the reign of terror under the PPP cabals.
Let me tell readers some things about David Granger that may have political importance. During the reign of Ramotar, I met opposition leader Granger coming out of Bakewell. Although I was campaigning for the AFC, I stopped him and offered my support anytime he called on me. When President Ramotar prorogued Parliament to prevent a no-confidence motion, Mr. Granger held a weekly picket outside the Office of the President on Vlissengen Road. Ninety percent of the people Granger now surrounds himself with never joined the picket. When I participated, Mr. Granger came up and thanked me.
For two consecutive years, I attended Mr. Granger’s birthday at Congress Place; me and Dr. David Hinds. On both occasion Mr. Granger thanked me for coming. Ninety percent of the people Mr. Granger now surrounds himself with never graced that birthday occasion.
When Mr. Granger became President in 2015, he held his birthday celebration at Camp Ayanganna. The ‘Who’s Who’ in Guyana were invited; included on the list was ‘Buddy’ Shivraj, who attended. I did not receive an invitation. As David Hinds put it to me; “you are always in the face of the ministers because you write a daily column.” I do not attend those state occasions, so I would not have gone, but somehow Mr. Granger forgot my name. That is alright with me; I do classify myself as a working class boy, forever in blue jeans.
Mr. Granger didn’t communicate an invitation to me, but he found it appropriate to reply to one of my columns through Minister Harmon, in which I was accused of writing that the President patronized his son-in-law by giving him a ministerial job. I did not pen such a statement. I quoted from Minister Trotman (see my column yesterday).
This is the nature of Guyana. I feel sorry for the prisoner who lost his hand. This is the lot of the poor. In Guyana, he won’t be the last such victim.

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