The judge should have used the word, “civilized”

Dec 10, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In castigating the judicial system in Guyana for misadministration during the hearing of an appeal, Justice David Hayton of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) said; “It was very difficult to understand how this can be possible or justifiable in any legal system.”
For analytical purposes, one should focus on the words, “in any legal system.”
What the CCJ jurist is actually saying is that the anomaly he came across should not occur at all in a civilized nation. And it has happened in a modern Caribbean country in the 21st century.
Judge Hayton “ain’t see nuttin yet.” The judicial, political, social and administrative systems in Guyana are surreal. One has to live in this land to see its dysfunctional ontology which to an outsider would be incomprehensible.
I was elated when I read what that Caribbean judge said. So emotional I felt – running out my home with overflowing justification, heading for the Turkeyen seawall to sing to the morning sky – that I ignored the red signal at the junction at UG Road and the Railway Embankment and I got knocked down.
What that judge has observed about my country, I have been warning Guyanese about for decades. This is a dystopian, shambolic, Faustian, Kafkaesque wasteland going nowhere fast. I am so pessimistic about any type of future for this country that I doubt we will survive in thirty years’ time.
The new kid on the block is oil money. But a kindergarten kid would know that if Dracula is put in charge of the blood bank, the containers will be emptied in seconds. The Mephistophelean sermon will still be playing all over the 83,000 square miles of Guyana while the oil money is spent on fast, flashy state cars that even American billionaires cannot buy. That will be Guyana in 2022, when oil dollars will grease the palms of our tropical Mussolinis and sunshine populists.
The laughable thing about this land is that what judge Hayton observed will, as the older folks say, “go through one ear and pass through the other.” Or put another way, it is like “throwing water on duck’s back.” This is an area of darkness on the global map where nothing pierces the consciousness and conscience of humans, because those humans live in an Orwellian vortex where time and space have no meaning.
A Guyanese expatriate once came up to me on the seawall and said, “I read you all the time from where I am in Alberta, Canada, describe Guyana for me in one sentence.”
I intoned; “a soulless train heading for the Cassandra Crossing.” I said good morning and walked away with my dog. He exclaimed; “what is Cassandra Crossing?” He appeared to be a few years younger than me, so I thought he knew about that very famous movie with that title with the then-famous O.J. Simpson as one of the stars (O.J. died on the train).
He said he didn’t. I recommend it to him. If he is reading this, I hope he sends me an email telling me if he did look up the movie. My email address is fredkissoon@yahoo.com.
I guess life will go on as usual and after today passes into history, no one will remember or care to remember what a foreign judge said about how we do things in Guyana. Actually, Guyanese never cared or will ever care how we do things in Guyana. We transform the entire traffic in one of the busiest areas of downtown Georgetown into a virtual nightmare when our chaotic Parliamentarians are debating their jejune polemics; the nation is silent, accepting it with morbid resignation.
It is a nice country when you forget about the failure of human existence, because there are misleading signposts that make you laugh. I like the abandoned sign at the junction of Young Street and Camp Road that informs motorists travelling west on Carifesta Avenue that the road ahead is under repair, so make a left detour.
The real story is the road was completed three years ago, but the sign is still there to deceive you.
It is a real, funny country. I went up to a senior traffic rank one day and asked why the irritating deception is still there. He said that it is for the Ministry to take it down. That Ministry is named Public Infrastructure.
That Minister hasn’t seen the misleading sign that stares you in the face as you stop at the traffic signal. But he saw the dirty old, fridges on the seawall parapet, told me they are an ugly eyesore, and demolished them. That anachronistic sign is ugly too.

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