Handcuffed 94-year-old pensioner on $50,000 bail

Aug 25, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is no question in my mind, given my philosophical make-up, if I was thirty years old and I saw my country put a 94-year-old pensioner in handcuffs and place him on $50,000 bail for a non-violent crime as alleged forgery, I would have participated in attempts to remove the government.
I admitted before, and I am admitting again in these columns; I was involved in things in 1978 with my WPA comrades, before I left to study abroad, that would have led to the removal of the Forbes Burnham regime. I cannot name any of them because except for Mobutu, who died last year, they are all alive.
A government that stays silent over the handcuffing of a 94-year-old pensioner who is hauled before the courts and placed on $50,000 bail doesn’t deserve to be in office administering the affairs of my country. The population of this country doesn’t deserve to be among civilized nations if it cannot denounce such an uncivilized assault on a human of that age.
Each day, as I pen the descent into basic, raw, Freudian instincts that I see in this country, my life is driven deeper in the ocean floor of angst. I live right across from where the Atlantic Ocean is, and one day, that ocean may come across and with tsunamic force, do to Guyana what the oceans did to Atlantis. I don’t know if the people of Atlantis deserved that fate, but this I know; this God-forsaken land has no redemption about it, and if it receives a fate like Atlantis, I am sure if there is a God, he will not be moved.
When I sat down to compose my Thursday column on the poor security rank who got knocked down on the Harbour Bridge, damaged his face, and lost his bicycle that fell into the river, I had no idea I would be writing about a 94-year-old pensioner who the police would handcuff and whom the magistrate would put on $50,000 bail. I didn’t know that would happen, but I am not surprised it has. Readers of this column know my attitude to Magistrate McLennan and the police.
The Police Complaints Authority wrote to me about two months ago for a statement on what I saw; traffic ranks from Brickdam station at the gate of Parliament Building on Hadfield Street stopping motorists at random. I went to Brickdam, complained and wrote a column about it the next day. On the day of publication, the Authority made their request of me. I saw the identical action on Wednesday night, stopped and spoke to the police in the presence of a senior employee of the Georgetown Hospital, then went to Brickdam.
This is life in Guyana. What the Police Complaints Authority did with my written submission, I don’t know or care to know.
Not one leader in the Government of Guyana is going to give an official statement or a personal opinion on what happened to that 94-year-old pensioner. The lifespan of the entire world is not 94. Where is this aged fellow going if he skips bail? Why $50,000 and not self-bail? How fast could he run if he had bolted from the courts if there were no handcuffs? Do 94-year-old men attempt to escape from police custody? Is it an exaggeration to say a toddler could move faster than a 94-year-old man?
There are unsavoury, cruel, brutal things taking place in the magistrates’ courts. The consequences are staring us in the face. Only a fool could not predict the two prison mayhems. But power creates fools out of leaders. Only a dead society couldn’t see the making of those prison riots, and Guyana is a dead society. Only a complete fool cannot see that one day something terrible and tragic is going to happen in those court rooms.
You cannot remand a mother to prison because she stole a few thousands from her employer. Her son, watching his mother being led away, could very well lose his mind and become violent. A young man may freak out after seeing his father led away for a few ounces of ganja.
We are staring tragedy in the face in the magistrates’ courts. There are many dimensions of a fool, one of which is the idiot is too silly to learn the tragic lessons of the past. In six years’ time that 94-year-old pensioner, if he lives, (I hope he does) will reach one hundred, and the Cabinet of Guyana, including the President and Prime Minister, will fête him at State House.

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