Are we freer since 2015?

Mar 21, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I went to Wakenaam on Saturday morning for the Hindu religious work for my niece who died last year. Hindus call it – “one year dead work.”
On my way to Georgetown, I saw five traffic operations, from Parika to Vreed-Hoop, where ranks were stopping drivers at random. I had the wrong person next to me in such situations – my wife. In the first encounter, I complained to the presiding officers and my wife was uneasy. She asked me not to intervene.
On my way to Georgetown, I got a call from a friend asking me to come to Providence station, because he was wrongfully arrested. At Providence, there was another random stop operation headed by a senior officer in khaki uniform. In all six situations, when the police saw me, I saw them whispering among themselves and looking at me. These people know I write about the impropriety of random stops often, and they knew there and then what they were doing was wrong.
How is it possible that on one day I saw six operations of random stopping and the administration of the police force are unaware that such exercises take place often? The answer is that the hierarchy of the police force is involved in this abuse. It has not changed since the new administration came to power in 2015.
Do we have a creeping dictatorship in Guyana? I was shocked when some UG lecturers showed me the changes to the statutes of the university made in 2016 that centralize power, and has substantially diminished the role of the academic staff. I say without even a modicum of hesitation, that UG is less democratic in terms of devolution of power than when the PPP ruled this country.
Do we have a creeping dictatorship in Guyana? Let’s look at what happened at the central office of Region 5. Guards from the firm, Integrated Security Services, met at the office to seek help from the Regional administration. These poor souls have not been paid since November. They were removed by an order from the representative of the APNU+AFC government to Region 5, who goes under the title Regional Executive Officer (REO). What does that remind you of? Rewind the tape to when the PPP was in power.
AFC parliamentarian Michael Carrington intervened with a minister about security guards attached to a certain ministry being paid below minimum wage by a private firm contracted to the government. The minister told Carrington that is not the concern of the government. What does that remind you of? Obviously, the type of ministers the PPP had when it ruled Guyana.
Cleaner/sweepers have picketed the Office of the President over their meagre payment which is below minimum wage. But here is the horrible dimension to this tragedy.
The Public Service Union told the media that one of the reasons for the demonstration by these womenfolk is their demand that the APNU+AFC government implement a 2013 Cabinet decision on the raising of these income levels in accordance with the minimum wage regulations. These poor women no doubt thought that they would be freer after 2015.
Is there a creeping dictatorship in this country since the last election? I am curious to know how Lincoln Lewis and Dr. David Hinds would reply to that. Life is strange. I spoke to Lincoln Lewis three weeks before he was dropped as a Chronicle columnist. Lincoln was explicit – the government is not much different from the PPP and went on to explain that the difference is that it doesn’t physically harm and jail people like the PPP bosses did.
At that point I jumped in and told Lincoln that these are early days yet. When Jagdeo came to power in 1999, it was years after that critics were dismissed from their employment, others were jailed, and some died under suspicious circumstances. I was pellucid in my position to Lincoln and he can confirm what I said. I intoned that these are early days yet, so do not dismiss the possibility of the return to the days of the PPP when there were dismissals, arrests and deaths.
Is there a creeping dictatorship in tragic Guyana? Not for a fraction of a moment, not even a fraction, do I believe that the Chronicle’s editor-in-chief acted on his own in dropping Hinds and Lewis as columnists with the Chronicle. In coming columns, I will discuss what I told Khemraj Ramjattan about power when I met with him in February for the first time since he became a power holder, and what I told David Hinds at channel 9 studios when he first became a Chronicle columnist.

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