The story of Jagdeo/Ramotar combination is a Guyanese tragedy

Oct 12, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The PPP is contesting about 99 percent of the local government seats, whether at the NDC or municipal level. Each time I read what the PPP contestants have to say about what they will do for my country during the LGE 2018 campaign, I am enraged. There is no easy description one can find to portray what Guyana looked like under the control of the two presidents – Jagdeo and Ramotar. Together they shared fifteen years in office.
In those fifteen years, the government had the money to landscape our rural areas to change their uncivilized ambience. The Jagdeo/Ramotar combination never did. By what logic, the PPP now in opposition, will improve the lives of our rural folks? Where is the money going to come from? This is a question every citizen voting in the NDC contests must ask. If citizens choose not to do so then they are open to being deemed self-destructive.
Here is a lengthy quote from my column titled “Bees and jungles: My country 14 years ago,” of Sunday, August 6, 2017. “In 2003, I went to La Grange cemetery. It was the burial of my wife’s uncle. I was deeply disgusted at the site and sight of what was before me.
“This was not a burial ground. This was an abandoned piece of land overran by jungle. You just could not get to the plot of burial. It was a forest. To think that people’s loved ones are resting there and when one goes there to contemplate, one cannot be near the final resting place of their spouse or parent or child.
“I was so angry that I commented on this insult to the people of La Grange in one of my columns, back then. On Thursday, fourteen years after my first visit to La Grange cemetery, I was back there. This time, it was the wife of the man laid there in 2003. After 14 years, the La Grange cemetery is in a more squalid state; completely taken over by jungles and forests. It was absolutely useless requesting that the wife be put down beside her husband. There was no way one could have located his tomb in that hell hole.
‘What has happened in my country 14 years ago to cause this cemetery to deteriorate so badly? The answer should be obvious. If the country doesn’t move then it recedes back in time to primitive eras. There is no space to walk between tombs in the cemetery. There are tiny drains that separate sections of the ground but there is no plank to cross these drains to get to the burial plots.
“It is the rainy season and everything was muddy. If there is no plank to cross over these drains, how can you lift the coffin over them? It was risky business because you can slip. Obviously, the women with heels couldn’t make it. A rotten piece of wood, about two feet in length and four inches in width, was located to make the crossing. But not for the women. Every man held his wife’s hand to negotiate over the rotten wood.
“The female pastor to conduct the service decided that she was not going to the spot because it is under a tree and a swarm of bees could be disturbed. Those who were related to the deceased decided bees or no bees they have to bury the dead.
“La Grange has to be one of the smallest burial grounds in the entire world; it caters only for residents there. Why such a small ground is allowed to become a virtual jungle? Is there an answer? Are there answers to why Guyana is going back in time when life was primitive?
“What lacerates your psyche was that the NDC that controls La Grange was a part of the ruling, PPP party since God knows when. Why therefore the central government could not have landscaped that place? Of course, I have only seen La Grange ground, maybe this is the pattern throughout the entire country. ”
You couldn’t blame the APNU+AFC administration for the state of that burial ground in 2017. Just two years before, the PPP was in power and for 23 years. Why was La Grange cemetery left in that appalling state? Are you telling me that with eyes wide open in November 2018, the very people that live in that village will go and vote for the PPP?
If the burial ground was an uncivilized wasteland when the PPP was in government, what will it become when the PPP wins it in November and has no money to clear the jungle?

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