Christmas after 30 years as a columnist

Dec 25, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This year marked thirty years that I have been a newspaper columnist. Each year, I have done an article related to Christmas or had some bearing or relevance to this day. Obviously, the question must be; what more can you write on Christmas? Really, after 30 years, there has to be topic exhaustion.
What I will do today is advance a rebuttal to the position of some observers that the APNU+AFC’s loss of power has dampened the Christmas spirit. Actually, I had planned today’s column to reflect on the finality of Nagamootoo’s political career, which I believe has ended in ignominy and disaster, but I know this is Christmas, so leave caustic commentary for another day.
In a forthcoming column, I will reflect on the end of the political longevity of Moses Nagamootoo, the short-lived political career of David Granger and the prospects of Charrandass Persaud’s party in the 2019 poll.
The talk is that the Christmas mood has been spoilt. How is that so? There is no violence, no mayhem, no street chaos. The economy has only been affected by one day. That was December 21, when the clowns blocked off downtown Georgetown as Parliament met for the no-confidence vote. That day and only that day shopping was affected.
A jogger came up to me on the seawall Sunday morning and said that the political crisis came at a bad time – the Christmas season. I told him to get on with his life and don’t let Guyana’s ill-shaped political landscape bother him. This has been the nature of politics in this country long before Independence.
Where I live, which is next door to CARICOM and the Giftland Mall, I didn’t see a reduction of traffic. It was crazy as usual on the roadway outside the mall. On Sunday night, the line was extremely long. I didn’t use the railway embankment where I live. I took the Atlantic highway. People went about their business the next day after the government fell, then the following day, which was Saturday and then Sunday.
I was in three supermarkets Sunday and all were filled with shoppers. This article had to be in early Monday, so I cannot comment on what the ambience was like on Christmas Eve.
I will not deny there was some trepidation by people that was brought about by APNU and the AFC transporting two hundred demonstrators to make noise outside Parliament while the debate was going on. There were photographs of Moses Nagamootoo, David Patterson, Khemraj Ramjattan and Volda Lawrence greeting the demonstrators and assuring them, “don’t worry, ‘cause every little thing is going to be alright” as Bob Marley sang in one of his songs. Simona Broomes was gyrating with the crowds reminding us where she came from.
The fear that the Christmas season would be disrupted was engendered by those very politicians greeting those demonstrators, because after stirring them up, then they became deflated. Sections of the population felt that there would be violent marauding in the streets. That did not happen. I doubt it will. There is an election in 90 days’ time and whoever lacerates the Christmas mood today and the coming days will be devastated at the polls.
There is another factor at work. Guyanese, unlike the rest of the world’s nationalities, have been burdened by disruptive politics their entire lives. It has so hardened them that the outcome of the no-confidence motion had no effects whatsoever on dampening their approach to the holiday season. For a people saddled with a cruel, primitive political culture the past eighty years, the no-confidence motion was just another in the never-ending saga of Guyanese politics.
This Christmas is just like all the other Christmases I have seen in Guyana – the rich have; the poor need to have. The economy in December 2018 has not been different from the preceding years. I bought toys to share out and all were more expensive than the same types I bought last year. Income for the labouring masses has not significantly improved from last year. From the time President Desmond Hoyte ushered in a development model-styled, New Economic Recovery Programme, Guyana has been living with neoliberal economics.
Neoliberal economics is inherently disadvantageous to the working classes. The Democratic Party in the US discovered that too late. Macron in France thought it could work. Now he is hanging on for political life. His situation is so precarious no one knows if he will fall. In Guyana, the neo-liberal government fell. For the last 30 years, I have wished you a delectable holiday season. As usual, I will spend it quietly with my soul mate.

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