A cruel neo-liberal government rules Guyana

Aug 18, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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What did Cheddi Jagan, Forbes Burnham, the New World group and later Walter Rodney have in common? They believed that post-colonial development must avoid copying the formula of economic development as advised by western capitalist rulers. Every radical thinker in Guyana after Independence urged a pathway that avoided large airports, palatial ministries, eight-lane highways, construction of huge military headquarters, enormous infrastructural constructions etc.
The thinking behind this Western blueprint was that you need modern infrastructure to attract investment. It didn’t work. India in particular had no use for that theory. In fact, Indian university curriculum moved away from the British emphasis on the classics, humanities, the arts and social sciences. After Independence, India emphasized medicine in its university curriculum.
The confrontation between Burnham and Rodney remains a mystery in the history of the entire Third World. Both men didn’t accept the traditional capitalist approach to economic development. Burnham from 1974 onwards moved Guyana as far away as possible from the Puerto Rican model that the Americans imposed on post-colonial states, through aid and loans (for more on this see the well-argued article of Opposition Leader Cheddi Jagan in the journal, DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 1982 and titled, “Alternative models of Caribbean Economic Development and Industrialization.”)
A disciple of Forbes Burnham is in power in Guyana, David Granger, and perhaps he is still to learn about the political economy that characterized the rule of his idol from 1974 onwards. Mr. Granger presides over one of the purest neo-liberal economies anywhere in the world. It is a flawed, failed system that is bound to lead to disaster. But then again, this country has known nothing else except disasters.
The government announced that it was proceeding with the construction of waterfront recreational facilities, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, when the British decided that they would fund the project. Three sites have been identified – Vreed-en-Hoop stelling, the Stabroek river front area and the long stretch of beach from the Kingston jetty to Ogle. Now remember, Minister Patterson said the government was well on its way to financing this aesthetic venture (my word, and I mean to be cynical) when the British stepped in.
More than fifty years after Burnham and Jagan rejected the Puerto Rican model of development it is back in Guyana, and most ironically being championed by an idol of Burnham.
Basic infrastructure and essential services in this country have been primitive for a very long time, yet we will spend hundreds of millions on beautifying water front sites. So my wife and I will go on the Vreed-en-Hoop stelling, buy two fish burgers, look at the Demerara River, engage in a romantic, nocturnal embrace, then drive home on the streets where I live in the dark, and we will die, because there we will not see the roaming horses. I live at the junction of the Railway Embankment and UG Road where there are no street lamps that have been working for decades now.
The Alberttown fire station building is a disgrace. Kaieteur News carried a front page story where a house right next to the station was burnt to the ground. Please note; right next to the station that had a fire tender at the time. The Georgetown Hospital doesn’t have a tonopen to test eye pressure. It never had one, neither did the ophthalmology centre in Berbice. Guyana, unlike Barbados, does not have facilities for DNA testing. Only private hospitals in Guyana do dialysis treatment; no public hospitals have the facilities.
The police force at the moment does not have even a third of the quota of speed guns that it needs. Ninety percent of the streets in the capital city do not have public lamps and that includes the continuation of Irving Street named J.B. Latchmansingh Road that takes in the headquarters of the army. Not one public school in the entire territory of Guyana, and this includes Queen’s College, has consistently functioning washrooms. The technology labs at Government Technical Institute and at UG are bare. The National Library in an age of high technology does not offer computer service to its users. UG students have to make do with two photocopiers.
And last, but certainly not least. Next year citizens are going to these three waterfront leisure sites, enjoy themselves, and return home to blackouts. Please believe me; it is true when I say that at Turkeyen where I live, we get blackouts daily. Not five times a week, but daily. The politicians that run this neo-liberal economy are going to ask you in 2020 to return them to power. And an idiot like you are going to do just that.

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