I’m calling on the President to help this aging Amerindian fellow

Mar 22, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

To say that I live in disgust of how poor people are treated in this country would be an understatement. I believe people like President Granger, Vincent Alexander and many others, if pressed to bare their soul about the Walter Rodney/Forbes Burnham confrontation, would say that Rodney went too far in trying to remove the Burnham Government that for all intents and purposes was a pro-working class administration, therefore Rodney’s passion was misplaced.
Looking back at events long gone, we make interpretations of moments that we were not part of, therefore our conclusions are not based on experience. I was part of the Walter Rodney landscape as a youth, and I would make the incontrovertible statement that Walter’s purpose towards Burnham was the creation of a revolution to remove Burnham.
It is when you live in the moment of the life of an episode that you embrace a perspective that the historian, writing from a distance, cannot grasp.
I have no regrets at being part of the Walter Rodney phenomenon. I participated in Walter’s revolutionary activities because I saw wrongs committed by the Burnham regime that I could not be silent on. The list is virtually endless. You are there inside the moment and you do have an existential choice – to rebel or not. I chose the former as did hundreds of others. Walter lost his life in the process.
But you chose to rebel because wrongs must be righted. Yes, looking back, when we compare Burnham to every other president gone by, Burnham stands out. But Burnham stands out in the negative sphere too. And once leaders commit violations, maybe there is no existential choice but only one choice.
This has been a long preamble to the caption above, the relevance of which is that I am admitting that if I was as young in 2017 in Guyana as when I was young during the Rodney era, maybe I would have reenacted my Rodneyite instincts. I refer readers to a KN letter yesterday by an aging Amerindian gentleman who gave his name and address.
In that sad missive, he recounted how he worked for one of the super-rich family businesses in Guyana for 32 years, only to find that over those three decades, six contributions the NIS have for him.
Is he lying? Well he gave his name and location, so he could be identified and be reached. He said there is an ongoing correspondence on his missing contributions with the NIS. He also named the Human Resource Director of the company that gave him a statement of his working status. If he is lying then the NIS should issue a statement. The company official should also deny what he wrote. He also pointed to four visits from the interior where he lives, to the NIS. I may be wrong, but this does not sound like a man who is out to make mischief.
If this man’s story is true that in a period lasting 32 years, only six contributions were paid on his behalf, then we have criminal action that needs to be investigated. But there is a but. Suppose the head of the family business did not know that the contributions were not paid, then you can’t charge him/her. But surely, the finance people in the business are culpable. Then the law has to come into play; not only the law, also the voices of Guyanese.
Can one imagine what goes through the mind of a sixty-one year-old person who gave half his life to a company, only to find that he will not get an NIS pension as he grows older? This is not only heart-breaking, it is inhuman. Of course here comes my cynicism – who in Guyana cares about the inhuman existence in this long forgotten land.
So are all our radical women folk who write letters and protest with their pickets, ready to come to this gentleman’s assistance? Are all those nice people with whom I picketed in the anti-parking meter protest willing to help this poor, Amerindian man?
I have asked you the question. Now I will ask myself the question and answer it.
Trump will be long gone from the US presidency; we will long go past the 2020 elections; people will fly in their personal drones in the next ten years; Scotland will have its Independence from the UK, and we will still wait for those voices in Guyana to help this Amerindian man. And why is this so? Read two philosophers – Arthur Koestler and Thomas Hobbes – and you will know why.

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I’m calling on the President to help this aging Amerindian fellow

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