Power in 2018; same as 60 years ago

Feb 11, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

The first accusation that comes out of the mouths of politicians who are criticized for wrong use of power is ‘unpatriotic.” It should have come as no surprise to experienced activists and those who study Guyanese politics when two ministers (Jordan and Harmon) used that adjective in response to an unnamed advertisement urging investors to go elsewhere rather than Guyana.
The argument here does not centre on the advertisement (whose advocacy I cannot and will not accept, but that it should not have been published is debatable) but rather, on how the two ministers, particularly Harmon, reacted. One of the uneasy and perhaps uncanny faults of Guyanese power holders since Cheddi Jagan won the 1957 elections, is that they are barefaced enough to tell academics and activists when their actions and words are unpatriotic, but they refuse, and stubbornly so, to see their opaque, unaccountable and arrogant use of power is also unpatriotic.
Minister Harmon observed; “I would just want to urge all of those persons who continue to write and speak about the negativity, that they should think positive and see what is good for Guyana.”  The impulsive question to ask Harmon is if he feels he alone knows what is good for Guyana. I would also like to ask Harmon what he considers negative statements. About a year ago, I called upon Minister Harmon and the President to apologize to me for a negative statement they published about me and to date they have not.
The Office of the President issued a statement accusing me of making mischief in a column in which I repeated a disclosure AFC leader Raphael Trotman made at an AFC press conference. He said that President Granger, on his own, acting outside of the Cummingsburg Accord between APNU and the AFC, appointed three ministers – Trotman himself, the Business Minister and Agriculture Minister.
Using a strong accusation “mischief” was reckless and dangerous. Fanatical supporters of the President could have harmed me. Since the refusal to acknowledge his error, I have diluted my respect and admiration for David Granger. I did not engage in mischief. I reported what Trotman said publicly. Why then accuse me of a wrongdoing and not Trotman?
Minister Jordan’s take on the advertisement included the following observation; “We Guyanese seem not to like ourselves. If we have a difference in the family, I am sure we can solve it. But when we bring it nationally so as to bring harm and put our country into disrepute…”

This is a loaded statement that reveals the inherent flaws of our rulers over the past sixty years. What exactly does “difference in the family” mean? The President and Harmon did not see a difference in the family when they publicly accused me of creating mischief against President Granger.

I could go on to list one hundred examples of “differences in the family” that the power-holders refused to solve. Literally, I don’t know where to start. But I will offer just one – where is the campaign promise to relook at the draconian penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Try telling a crying wife or mother after jailing her son and husband for three years for five grams of marijuana that they must be patriotic. How about solving that difference in the family, Mr. Jordan?

Let’s move on to the Minister’s words of “put our country into disrepute.”  Every time there is a horrible natural disaster in another country, if you go into the fish market, the bank, the restaurant, the nightclub, the office, you would hear the words; “Guyana does not get natural disasters, but we get man-made ones.” Ask those who speak those words what they mean. They mean that power-holders are destroying this country and have been doing that the past sixty years.

It started with the intransigence of Premier Cheddi Jagan and President Burnham, went into overdrive in that direction, and since then the man-made disasters have continued.

This is a country known for unbelievable ironies. Ministers Harmon and Jordan have composed their accusations of unpatriotic attitude in the midst of the oil and gas conference at the Marriott. How ironic! In the middle of a discussion of an oil/petroleum agreement that is unprecedented in the type of concessionary accommodations a foreign investor got from a home country, two ministers are saying  Guyanese bad mouth their country too much.

Maybe one can lay a charge of unpatriotic behaviour against the President and his government for that petroleum contract. But here is another dimension to the irony – the oil confabulation took place in a state-owned hotel that this country does not need.

---

---