The self-destructive delegates at the PNC congress today

Aug 19, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon, News

One of the political theories running through these columns of mine over the past three decades is that the Guyanese society has suffered a deep, extensive laceration of its collective psyche, and this tragedy has effectively damaged the nation’s faculties to think, reflect, argue, analyze; in other words to be rational beings.
I have traced this dystopian breakdown to the era of the Burnham/Rodney confrontation and have argued that the psychic consequences of this tragic confrontation has been so enduring, that the psychological recovery will take an enormous time to occur or redemption may not be possible.
The manifestations of this psychic destruction is frightening, and puts Guyana in a class of its own when compared to other countries, in that the malaise, resignation, fear, pessimism, angst, mental loss run so deeply in Guyanese society that the values that hold civilization together are constantly slipping away from this country. No one in this land has a command of the sense of humanity. This is what makes this country so sad. No one has a sense of self-worth.
I have polemized countless times in these columns that even in repressive societies, there are certain violations that those nations’ citizens would not be silent about. One of these I have repeated so many times in these articles is the complete mental bankruptcy of university life in Guyana. In all other countries, university students are just restless and waiting to snap at any instance of injustice.
It could be the most repressive countries in the world, and students would come out. Not in Guyana. Read the papers of any nation in the world and you would see academics at the universities are the first ones to voice an opinion on the controversial topics of the day.
Guyana has four daily newspapers carrying a combined thirty letters each day, and not one is from a university lecturer. That obtains in no other country on Planet Earth. Last week, there was a flood in a certain village in Trinidad. When the Attorney-General and a councillor went into the area to see the damage, the residents threw flood water on them and chased them out. In Guyana, such an action is virtually impossible. It will never happen.
In no other country on the globe would people be discomforted by the most inconsequential mistakes of their government and live in mortal fear of being identified. I have an email which I will keep forever, because no other person than a Guyanese would descend to such sickening levels when contacting a media operative. This man describes someone living in a village, which he named who is the prime suspect in the murder of his father.
He describes vividly the situation for me and offered names of the actors in the entire episode and offered the reason for his father’s murder – rejection of the guy who was courting the daughter. He ended his email begging me that as I proceed to investigate, I must not mention his name. I will not detain you with the details of my reply. But in my response I did say – “man your own father”.
One of the negatives that has taken over this country because of that psychic breakdown is the instinct of self-destruction. The more destructive the power-holder is, the more the ordinary voters cling to him/her. I was passing the AFC office on Thursday afternoon when I saw Leonard Craig outside. I stopped to talk to him with my dog in my arms. An AFC Minister came out to look at my dog and saw a large number of vehicles parked up the road outside a business for reconditioned cars.
He looked at the site and said; “this is nonsense, I will do something about it”. I was so livid, I put my dog in the car, began to drive away, but said to him that the major highways don’t have lights, traffic lights don’t work, and he has time to move some cars in a parapet, which is far less important than non-existent street lights.
Finally, the PNC chairmanship election today.
Don’t take my word for it, go to Congress Place and see the delegates who will be voting for a person that is likely to be the president in a few years’ time. Almost ninety percent are folks from the poorer sections of Guyanese society and from the working classes. But they will gleefully go out there and vote for one of three persons who are top policymakers in perhaps the most neo-liberal, anti-working class government Guyana has produced since Independence, and this includes the Hoyte administration. They will vote for their own destruction.

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