There is a colossal, psychic breakdown in Guyana

Sep 28, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The tragedy of the rape/murder of Leonard Archibald has struck this nation like a gargantuan hurricane, something we have never witnessed in this country. Guyanese everywhere is talking about this act of heinous insanity.
In as much as we revolt against what happened to this innocent, little child, we must not forget other uncivilized ravages that have been perpetrated on this nation the past two years, some of which need mentioning.
Burglars invaded a Berbice home, looted the place and set it on fire, killing a mother while her son escaped. One of the accused while entering the court was waving to his relatives and laughing. A group in Berbice burglarized the home of a shopkeeper in his seventies and chopped him and his wife to death; while the victims were bleeding to death the invaders were eating and drinking.
Over on West Coast Demerara, robbers couldn’t get into the bedroom of a couple that was in their seventies. They burnt the home down killing the elderly folks.
From media reports, it appears that gunmen went into a home, robbed the occupants and when leaving sprayed the victims with bullets. One occupant is dead, another is critical. The question that everyone asked is; why do that when you robbed the people?
If they come behind you, then fear of getting caught could cause you to fire but not shooting at the people at random in their home.
In Monday’s KN edition, when I analyzed the Leonard Archibald tragedy, I argued that we see gruesome crimes in large industrialized societies where because the society breeds alienation, people freak out and do horrible things.
A majority of Third World societies do not experience that kind of intense alienation. Is something deadly wrong with the nationality known as Guyanese? Passersby were walking on a New York street and saw a person sawing off the head of a person. It was a Guyanese man who killed his wife.
Robert Simmel was one of the defence lawyers mafia figures turned to. He was good. Simmel took the case of a Guyanese drug trafficker and that was the end of him. He was given a dozen years for witness tampering.
A British woman who worked in the Foreign Office in London committed suicide on her holiday in Berbice two weeks ago. Who knows; maybe she vacationed in many other parts of the Caricom region. But she died on holiday in Guyana.
Here is an interesting piece of statistics taken from the August 11, 2017 edition of the New York Times with the caption; “In little Guyana, proposed cuts to family immigration weigh heavily.” This is what the Times reported, “Foreign-born Guyanese people make up a tiny share of the United States as a whole — just over 280,000 people in 2015, or 0.09 percent of the total population.”
What is the importance of that little piece of information? It tells the story of the psychic breakdown of a nation of people known as Guyanese. We constitute 0.09 percent of the US population. That is, Guyanese born in the US. Now check the statistics on crime, suicide, road accidents, family dispute and other negative among that 0.09 percent and compare them with Greeks, Nigerians, South Koreans, Pakistanis and other nationalities who were born in the US. You will see per capita, that the negatives are higher among Guyanese.
Do you know what 0.09 percent means in a population of 324,459,463 million— the number of Americans in the US in 2017? Guyanese born in the US constitute a mere speck on the US landscape. Yet we are always in the news for the wrong reasons.
There is a difference, of course, between Guyanese in the US and Guyanese living here. We here are not subject to the mental pressures people in post-modern societies have to put up with. Yet look at the bestialities and sadism. Something is wrong with this nation. Something is wrong with the nationality known as Guyanese.
What could it be? We have to be careful when we accept the monocausal methodology. There could be more than one cause. Several factors could explain this descent into nihilism.
I think we should start with leadership. Space will not allow for an elaboration but my mind goes back to President Hoyte. Hoyte let this society know that he was in charge, he had a programme and an agenda, and he was not tolerating crime, incompetence, skulking, indiscipline etc.
The society felt that it had a no nonsense leader that was prepared to stop the rut in Guyana. His message filtered down to the entire country.

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