The seawall roundabout and the Emperor’s New Clothes

May 12, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This is my second opinion on the newly constructed seawall roundabout. It will be my last. I have lived in Guyana my entire life, except for studies abroad, and though I am not a brilliant social analyst, I believe I am a plausible one and my analyses of this country I believe have not been off target for the decades I have been writing. My analysis of my country tells me if any land fits neatly the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes, it is Guyana.
The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes is about people who are afraid to criticize because since everyone accepts what they see, they are afraid they will be laughed at. So they join the crowd and sing hurray, only that they are singing to something that is pathetically nonsensical. Nonsense then becomes sense as in the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. His clothes weren’t real, but the citizens were afraid to tell him, because they felt they would be told they were wrong. In the end they and their Emperor were made into clowns, with an Emperor parading the streets of his kingdom “in puris naturalibis.”
The seawall roundabout in a silly country named Guyana is the Emperor’s New Clothes. The motorists of the kingdom of Guyana are jumping for joy because they believe they have a new saccharine pathway to drive. So the Emperor invited the press to see the roundabout. The Guyanese press is a microcosm of the larger society. Like the Emperor’s subjects, not one of our journalists, stood up, watched the Emperor in his face and asked him the questions about the deceptions of the roundabout.
The Stabroek News, in reporting on the Emperor’s invitation to see the roundabout, carried the story with a video. When you play the video, it is as pathetic as the roundabout. I am assuming that the Ministry of Public Works (oops, sorry, Public Infrastructure; how idiotic are our rulers) supplied the video. Please go and look at the video. There are only two items to be seen – traffic going east on Carifesta Avenue, then going past the roundabout to get into Clive Lloyd Drive to go on the East Coast. This movement does not have anything to do with how to use the roundabout.
The second item in the clip is traffic going west on Kitty Public Road and turning south on Vlissengen Road. How this appeared in the video, and its relevance to the roundabout, is beyond human comprehension. Traffic going west on Kitty Public Road and turning south into Vlissengen has been going like that for decades now. Such movement has absolutely nothing to do with the roundabout. Please do not take my word for it. Just visit the area.
When I did my first column on the roundabout on April 27, I mentioned my interview with the engineer in charge, Sherod Parkinson. He did not answer the difficult questions. No journalist this week on the visit to the site asked Parkinson commonsensical questions about the roundabout.
Here are my arguments for rejecting the statement by the Government of Guyana that the roundabout is an improvement of the flow of traffic at that dangerous junction where Carifesta Avenue, Kitty Public Road and Vlissengen Road meet in a confluence.
If 20 drivers travel west each morning at 8 am on Kitty Public Road to cross into Carifesta Avenue to get to Marian Academy and 20 drivers travel north each morning at 8 am on Vlissengen Road to turn east into Clive Lloyd Drive and 20 vehicle go east each day at 8 am on Carifesta Avenue to go up the East Coast, all three directions will meet face to face as when you had the old system. The roundabout will not remove the uncertainty involved when those opposite directions meet. The roundabout will not remove the flow of those three opposing directions facing each other.
Mr. Parkinson told me that I can quote him on the traffic lights, and I did in my first article on the subject. He said two sets of traffic lights will be installed to regulate the opposite flow of traffic, as when you had the old system. After he said that, I immediately responded by asking him to show me then how the new operation will regulate the traffic differently from the way it was before. He couldn’t answer that but to tell me I have already made up my mind.
Let me close by saying that it is my opinion that someone thought about putting a roundabout by the seawall for beautification purposes. The Emperor and his subjects have been fooled.

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