Dear Irfaan, please offer explanations for these nightmares

Jul 12, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

My dog is five years old. I walk her twice – morning and afternoon. If I have to be out from 8 AM, I would walk her from 6AM to ensure she gets her matutinal stroll. The only time I did not walk her in those five years was last Wednesday.

Freddie Kissoon

My daughter is studying at an English university and she needed a “small piece” to tide her over. Upon her request my wife and I journeyed to the bank on Wednesday morning.
Well you know how long transactions take at the banks. After the bank, I had several things to do. I took a nap and got up at 7 PM.
My dog’s afternoon leisure stroll had passed. So I took her out for a drive. Strangely, I did not keep going west on the Railway Embankment but turned south on gas station road or mud dam road. I don’t know what is the name of that street or if it has a name at all.
This is the second time in these columns, I am enquiring about the identity of this roadway. It begins from the Atlantic highway at the Rubis gas station, crosses over the Railway embankment and ends at Bel Air village. Moses Nagamootoo, prior to 2015, lived just off that street.
Halfway on the street is covered in complete darkness, I slowed down to negotiate a large hole. Right there next to the car, a lady in working clothes was walking. She turned and looked at the car and I saw the fright on her face.
As I stared at her and she looked at me, I detected a sign of relief. Either she knew me or she judged by looking at me that this was not the type of personality that would harm her.
As I drove further up the dark street, I saw a middle age man with a carpenter’s tool bag. It looked like he was going home from work. As I drove out of that unnamed street my mind was being bombarded with confusing thoughts that became uncontrollable.
All I kept repeating in my mind is, “Why after 53 years of Independence?” I kept saying those words to myself as I drove. Why is a street where working women have to walk on to get to their home so dark after 53 years of Independence? What do foreign journalists say when they visit Guyana and see that in the capital city only a few streets have lamps; now mind you not lights that do not work, but never had lamps at all.
I may wonder why that road in Bel Air hasn’t got poles but right in the heart of the capital, many important roadways never carried street lamps since Independence in 1966.
I was on Benschop Radio last Monday evening and he asked me if it was not reasonable to understand that after just four years in power, the APNU+AFC government could not have undone the mess the PPP left.
It was a plausible question. The PPP was in power from October 1992 until May 2015, a total of just a few months short of 23 years.
Now in 2019, the PPP wants to be reelected. But voters should not even for a fleeting moment reflect about voting for the PPP if its presidential candidate, Irfaan Ali cannot offer explanations for the backwardness that remains after 23 years of power.
Why the streets in Georgetown were never clothed in bulbs during those 23 years? Surely, there has to be an explanation.
What did the PPP do in those 23 years while the country was enduring daily blackouts? What is Irfaan’s explanation? Why was money not allocated to GPL instead of building a Marriott Hotel?
Why in 23 years, the alleyways in the capital remained as jungles in a country where heavy rains inevitably bring about flooding?
Why in 23 years was the infrastructure of UG allowed to deteriorate so terribly? Why in those years, no effort was made to elevate UG which is indelibly associated with the name of Cheddi Jagan? Why is it Irfaan that under your party’s time in government, it took a year before an application for a birth certificate came through?
Why under your administration, Irfaan, a quantity of 30, 000 applications for lands up the Linden highway were allowed to fester? Why when you were Minister of Housing, applications for house lots since 1997 were still unattended on your desk?
Why during the PPP rule of 23 years, there were four government- owned swimming pools and none were opened to the public in a walk-in process?
Dear, Irfaan, what are your explanations?

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