Guyana 2020: Massy Supermarket, 007 and strange homosexuals

Jan 12, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – When I read that Massy Supermarket was opening across the road where I live, I jumped so high with elation that I got stuck and couldn’t come back down. The store would save me on gas and I could avoid the nightmarish traffic that characterizes driving in Georgetown.
But Massy not only disappointed me but also caused me to crash my car. Maybe the company should fix my damaged door. Here is what happened. Armed with ebullience, I entered the supermarket named “Massy Mega.” I was nonplussed at the word, “mega.” The car park was colossal. It was larger than Singapore. Then disappointment came.
It was not a retail outlet. You couldn’t buy one or two or three items of any product you like. You had to buy a carton of chocolate, a carton of cereal, a box of snacks, a two-litre tub of ice cream, a tray of three dozen eggs, a packet of six cucumbers, etc. Every product was sold in large quantities.
So Massy wasn’t for me. It was back to the traffic nightmare. I just bought a new reconditioned, cheap car, named Vitz. I drove into the jam-pack car park of Survival Supermarket and turned into the backside of a huge truck and mashed in my rear left side door. On seeing the damage, my wife stood motionless.
As 2020 wore on, the Massy bosses got scared. No one was shopping. Then one day, I looked out from my upper verandah that looks straight unto Massy’s, and saw the Massy bosses running out of the supermarket shouting; “eureka, eureka, we discovered Guyanese society.” Today, Massy Mega is one of the most patronized outlets, where you can buy one bubble gum if you want to. It is now a retail supermarket.
What is the lesson to learn from the Massy supermarket fiasco? How can any company venture into such an expensive undertaking without studying the economy? Massy did not do its homework. This lapse is ubiquitous all over Guyana. People are putting down stores in Georgetown that will flop because parking is a nightmarish deterrence.
The Massy mistake was small compared to other egregious happenings in Guyana in 2020. Take the licence to kill man, James Bond? How can any citizen make G$220 million by just getting some public land from an incestuous political relation and selling it within weeks? How can that ever be justified in any part of the world? Now if a private landholder gets a silly billionaire to buy his cow pen for $220 million, then, that is nobody’s business. But the land Bond got belongs to the children of this country.
In 2020, the election took place, the rigging was stopped, and democracy was saved but outside of the political sphere, Guyana remained a sad land. Here is a sample of the clouds of sadness that blow over. A vicious criminal gang invaded a home after they found out there was a visitor from overseas in the house. They shot dead one of the occupants. One of the accused was convicted but freed for time served during remand – three years.
A man murdered his three children and appealed his 30-year sentence. The Court of Appeal should have extended the sentence. In which country a man could murder his three children without either being executed or assigned a life sentence? But this was Guyana in 2020. The courts continued to be a mess in 2020.
A teacher appeals a magistrate decision of three years imprisonment. The High Court agrees to hear the bail petition, but the judge wants to see the magistrate’s written decision to guide her. The magistrate simply did not respond even after three weeks had passed. That magistrate was never called to give an explanation.
What about my own profession – the media? The year 2020 was one of the worst years for incompetent journalism. A lady walked into one of the Caribbean’s oldest retail stores. She published a claim of discrimination in a daily newspaper. The editor allowed the cry of racism to be printed without the required investigation, which is basic to journalism. In the publication, the only evidence provided was that the lady said she was ignored by attendants. Surely, in Guyana, where the racism accusation is always conveniently used and where racism cries could prove dangerous, this was a bad display of faulty journalism.
Finally, the homosexual and bi-sexual folks never protested in solidarity with any other oppressed groups in Guyana, but suddenly found out they were interested in foreign policy. They protested the visit of Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, to Guyana last year. Strange homosexuals!

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)