Latest update November 27th, 2024 1:00 AM
Aug 30, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I wrote two columns likening a certain post-2015 mindset to a peculiar creature named slime eels (see Monday, July 31, 2017, “Slimy eels that crawled out of the gutter of dictatorship,” and Wednesday, August 2, 2017, “I encounter slime eels daily; yes every day.”).
Those two articles dealt with columnists (in a certain newspaper purportedly co-owned by Bharrat Jagdeo), commentators and letter writers to the newspapers, who from 2016 onwards (less than a year of the APNU+AFC in power) discovered that the government of the day was practicing racial discrimination.
If in less than one year, these slime eels could discern the practice of race bias in public policy, then where were these slime eels from October 1992 to May 2015; make that almost 23 years? Are these slime eels telling us that there weren’t minor and major decisions that favoured one ethnic community over the other? Of course there were, but slime eels are slime eels.
This brings us to the written outburst in the state media of Bibi Shadick. It is best to quote her. “I am a proud member of the PPP cabal.” This was a cabal that brought social and cultural devastation to this country. This was a cabal that for twenty-three years of hegemony could not stop daily blackouts. This was a cabal that, through Shadick’s role as a member of the UG Council, rendered that university moribund. This was a cabal under whose power people didn’t come out of their houses after dusk came between 2002 and 2008 because violent, criminal death stalked the land.
This was a cabal that appointed a Commissioner of Police even though the most competent intelligence service in the world, the FBI, had forwarded to the American Government information of this officer’s involvement with the drug trade in Guyana. This was a cabal when in power, between 2002 and 2008, over five hundred men between 18 and 40 years were killed in extra-judicial mayhem in which policemen and drug traffickers were partners in crime.
This was the cabal that in one of the poorest countries in the world built a sixty million-US dollar Marriott Hotel when all around public infrastructure was falling down, including public schools. This was the cabal that made the largest investment in Guyana’s history, the Skeldon sugar factory – costing 200 million American dollars – that never functioned properly from its time of birth. This was the cabal that took over ten billion dollars from the NIS account and just wasted it on Clico investment and the Berbice Bridge.
If we had abuse of power legislation, as most other countries in the world have, then that cabal of which Bibi Shadick is joyful to be a member of, would be in the docks at this moment. It can still happen if this present government can muster the vision to understand what historical justice means. This NIS scandal was the most ferocious manifestation of the sadistic nature of this cabal. This cabal endangered the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people who worked their lives away, only to find out that the NIS may not have sufficient funds to pay them their expectant pensions. How sugar workers could have voted for this cabal that Bibi Shadick is proud of, has to be a moment of uncivilized madness.
It is this psychotic culture and bizarre environment that Bibi Shadick is overwhelmed to be a part of. But what has the foregoing got to do with slime eels?
You can wager and win handsomely that in tomorrow’s newspaper if you bet that the slime eels will come out denouncing Eric Philips as racist if he said he is proud to be an African rights activist. The slime eels in days to come will tell you that those PNC politicians are racist when they say that they were proud to be part of the past PNC government and embrace the present APNU leadership of the current administration.
No problem if Bibi Shadick exclaims openly that she is proud to be part of the PPP, a party that almost destroyed Guyana, but it becomes a problem if any Black Minister of the present administration talks about the positive things Mr. Burnham did for Guyana.
This is the disgust I have for slime eels. They are really slimy. Surely, you can criticize the current regime for mistakes made, but basic decency should drive you to admit that the members of the cabal that Bibi Shadick is happy to be part of should never rule this land again, and should be behind prison bars.
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