A small population that produces curiosities by the billions

Jul 18, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When you subtract the large number of people under16 years of age, then Guyana’s population is indeed very small. But it is a small society that produces an enormous amount of curiosities.
How can such a country with a mere 400,000 adults generate so much interesting things?
Eric Philips comes to mind. One of Guyana’s most prominent citizens, a personality that is a household name and is a close friend of editor-in-chief, Adam Harris, called me yesterday morning and said, “Freddie please write that it looks like the man who is recovering state assets is also recovering assets in another way.” He was laughing his head off.
Then he got serious and asked me if it is not an interesting thing that Eric Phillips is the lead investigator at SARA but is quite involved in business ventures. One has to admit that is a curiosity indeed.
Should someone who is constantly investing in business prospects be the lead investigator for a state agency tracking down corrupt business transactions done under the previous government?
What bigger curiosity do you want than what President Granger did?. Granger insisted that he, too, not only the Opposition Leader, should offer names to become GECOM chairman and in what has to be a gargantuan joke, he put on the list, Justice Patterson.
The same Patterson that voted to remove the Deputy Chief Elections Officer, Vishu Persaud, on the basis that the man’s character is questionable. And the same Patterson admitted that he never met Persaud or spoke with him so he could have assessed his character.
So how did Patterson know Persaud was a shifty person which is what he said about the man? He read it somewhere. And to date he has not produced the document where he read it from. Could it be a book from the lost empire of Timbuktu?
The rate at which this country produces inexplicable things is simply mind-boggling. A lady that runs a bar named Liquid Love was jailed for 15 years for trafficking two women.
The same magistrate, Ann McLennan, found a woman found guilty on the same charge involving the same number of persons. The Guyana Government was livid and through the relevant agency, issued a press statement rejecting the magistrate’s decision because the law stipulates a prison term for trafficking in persons.
Of course the 15 years made sense. The lady’s love was liquid. Liquidity is easily dissolvable. Perhaps if her bar was named Silicone Love, she might have escaped with a fine. Silicone sticks and lasts forever even when it is moldy.
Now it is curious why SARA didn’t investigate that magistrate’s decision. When I see Eric I will ask him. I plan to apply to SARA for a job because right now I am unemployed. I too want to recover things – like my job at UG.
The madness never stops in Guyana. An economist, Dr. Tarron Khemraj, is investigating the underground economy in Guyana. Now that is tricky business. It is not easy to get statistics for the underground economy. It is very difficult to ascertain the volume of money that passes through the underground economy because it is a business for which data is not easily available.
However, this same economist has written time and time again in the newspapers that it is impossible to arrive at ethnic ownership of wealth in Guyana. What a huge curiosity. The determination of ethnic ownership of wealth in Guyana is a straightforward and simple research.
The data is enormous and the data is there to be collated. But this same gentleman who finds such research impossible believes he can secure information on the underground economy. Maybe the date for ethnic ownership of wealth in Guyana was lost when the ancient empire of Timbuktu withered away.
No curiosity is more fascinating in Guyana than prison sentences. Gruesome murders are committed, a guilty plea is entered and the convict can walk away with a ten-year sentence.
Now it must be remembered that a year is actually nine months in the prison system. So some teenagers murdered one of Guyana’s most brilliant professors in political studies and got ten years. No one found guilty of sex with an underage person ever gets away with a stretch below 20 years.
Yet for taking a life of an innocent person you can easily walk away with a five-year term. Just kill and plead guilty and you will be out in a couple of years. Finally, I’m curious about why Royston King is not charged as yet based on what the Commissioner of Inquiry discovered about him. Is Eric recovering City Council’s assets?

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A small population that produces curiosities by the billions

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