Fidel Castro is in Guyana in 2017

Mar 25, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I would never understand why people who fought for freedom, justice, and liberation and who were learned in the ways of the world couldn’t see the huge fault in Fidel Castro. He mestastasised from liberation hero into what Latin America always knew and only knows – the oligarch.
It is like Russia. Experts on places like Singapore and Russia argue that the only culture they understand and are happy with is the generous strongman.
These experts would tell you that Vladimir Putin was inevitable. Russian history has been the history of a Leviathan; Russia will always have a Leviathan; there will be moments of power distribution and democracy but the strongman will return. It still boggles the mind why after almost fifty years in power, Castro still wanted to rule Cuba and only fate could have stopped him. If illness didn’t intervene then Cuba would have had a ruler way into his nineties.
Whether you love Castro, think he was superbly great as a Third World leader, believed he removed poverty, the stupendous fact that was as large as the combined oceans of the world was, that he was enchanted with power and refused to give it up to the new generation. It was this obsession with power that should have raised our suspicion that Castro was not as great as his admirers wanted us to believe.
Barack Obama in his last interview with 60 Minutes said he thought he could have won a third term but believed in the US term limits for President; he felt others should have the right to lead. The three great masters in this thinking were Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela.
Today in Guyana we have dozens of little Fidel Castros running around all the over the place. More than half of the population wasn’t born when Komal Chand became the leader of GAWU; Patrick Yarde, the Guyana Public Service Union; and Mike Mc Cormack, the GHRA. Not too far behind them is Mr. Juman Yassin of the Guyana Olympic Association. People like Clement Rohee, Indra Chandarpal and Gail Teixeira have been parliamentarians for more than thirty years. There is no question in my mind that if the PPP wins another general election, Rohee and Teixeira would fight to become ministers.
Yassin has been reelected. After this term he would have completed thirty years. Chand has been reelected. After his current term ends, he would have chalked up thirty-five years at the helm of GAWU. Mike Mc Cormack has gone past thirty-five years as the mover and shaker behind the Guyana Human Rights Association.
The positive yet negative thing about the elections of Chand and Yassin is that people, real, live, educated people, who are not illiterate and who have good jobs with decent families went with their eyes wide open and voted for Yassin and Chand to lead their organizations after twenty-five and thirty-years of rulership, respectively.
I wonder what arguments could sugar workers put up to tell me that they are happy with having a leader lead them for thirty-five years. I fervently believe Wales estate workers, all of them, should be given their severance pay benefits but I would like to ask them why they do not want new blood and fresh faces in their battle to save sugar?
So Patrick Yarde is going for yet another term of office. Yarde, Chand and Mc Cormack are virtual failures. Could Chand tell us what were his crowning achievements?
Chand should have been dismissed by his union a long time ago because a long time ago, his party which held power for twenty-three years and which Chand represented in Parliament for over thirty years undermined the viability of the sugar industry. This same barefaced man wants another government to save sugar. In saving sugar, Chand is saved also. I don’t think sugar can be saved but if it can, Chand has to go.
What is Yarde’s balance sheet? His union should have removed him after the 1999 strike ended in ignominious failure. There was the public spectacle of Yarde and Ramon “Rambo” Gaskin fighting over the direction of the strike. To think that Yarde could have put faith in Ramon Gaskin.
For the twenty-three years the PPP has been in power, and this includes the Cheddi Jagan presidency, it set about to dismantle the GPSU. Then Jagdeo came along and came close to doing so by first taking away agency shop dues which financially crippled the union. Today this same man wants another term. About Mc Cormack? Well the least said the better.

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Fidel Castro is in Guyana in 2017

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Fidel Castro is in Guyana in 2017

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