Guyana: The untouchable class and the poor and powerless

Oct 28, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are times I look out my bedroom window straight onto the Atlantic and I wonder what became of me and my country when I was a freshman at university. There is a contemplative song, “Where Did It Go” on the 2005 Burt Bacharach album, “At This Time”, that is so appropriate when I think of the Guyana I lived in when I started out as a university student and the Guyana in which I now carry on my existence. Here are some compelling words from that song that haunt me whenever I think of the seventies and 2018 in this land.

Stop the clock, make it stop
Where’d it go? I don’t know
Stop the clock, make it stop
Where is that world? Where did it go?

And tell me what happened to that world I knew?
Is it really gone?
How did we wind up in this place instead?
Is it really gone?

How do we get back to that other place?
There’s got to be a way
How do we undo a thousand mistakes?
There’s got to be a way
Where is that world? Where did it go?

Where is that Guyana where people fought for justice; where people revolted against the rich pulverizing the poor; where university students rebelled against society’s injustices; where workers downed tools over their mistreatment by rapacious employers; where academics sought to teach the masses about their legal rights; where lawyers were willing to fight on behalf of the downtrodden masses; where pickets and protests greeted bigoted people who discriminated against dark skin colour? Where is that Guyana? In the words of Bacharach, “how do we get back there?”
This is a time in Guyana where the very concept of humanity is under threat. The most reckless abuse of the law by the mighty and powerful takes place, a caricature that would never have been tolerated without a reaction by the society in the Guyana I knew as a university student. In today’s Guyana, the untouchable class can do whatever they want and enjoy impunity and immunity, while the poor and powerless (a term coined by our famous radical professor, Clive Thomas who is now part of a neo-liberal government and who was once a voice of power, reason and radicalism in the seventies – the era that shaped me along with the ideas of Clive Thomas; more on Thomas later) gets poorer and less powerful with every passing day in this land.

Ryan “Effing” Crawford allegedly abused a traffic rank that stopped him. Crawford was charged. NIS inspectors went into the office of a lawyer who holds a formidable legal position with the state (see my column of Wednesday, March 29, 2017 captioned, “Two NIS inspectors accused PPP lawyer of violent scatology.”) to inquire about lack of NIS payments. They were greeted in ways that were almost identical to what we heard on the tape with Ryan “Effing” Crawford and the policeman. This lawyer was not charged. My thinking is because of the job he has. Poor Ryan “Effing” Crawford! He does not possess a formidable state function.
I took an employee to Minister Keith Scott about violations of his industrial rights by one of Guyana’s most eminent retail businesses (see my column of Friday, September 7, 2018 captioned, “I took a victim to Minister Keith Scott.”). The gentleman told Scott that when he went to the NIS to claim medical reimbursement, he was told that there were only four remittances for him over a period of 18 months.
The act of not paying NIS for employees is a criminal offence, for which there should be prosecution. That does not happen in the land Clifford Krauss wrote about named Guyana. A clerk steals $10,000 from any private business company and the police do not waste time to charge. I never saw a notice in the newspapers asking these clerks not to steal and to stop doing it. But the newspapers often carry advertisements from the NIS naming wealthy individuals and companies who have not submitted remittances, and requesting that they do so.
Not paying NIS for your employees is a criminal offence. Why should the NIS put a placement in the newspaper persuading people to visit them who have violated the law? The NIS should be prosecuting them instead. Will the NIS put an advertisement in the newspapers persuading the clerk who stole NIS money to bring it back?
It all has to do with the degeneracy of the society where powerful people and companies can do what they want and are beyond the law. It is simple – they are “effing” powerful so why should they pay “effing” taxes.

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Guyana: The untouchable class and the poor and powerless

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