Guyana in 2020: The really sordid side of humans

Jan 27, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – My mind is made up both as an academic and social activist – 2020 was one of the most depressing, frightening, pessimistic, dangerous and socially destructive year in the pre-colonial and post colonial eras of Guyana.
One of my anticipations was that when we had our first COVID-19 death and it was a foregone conclusion that the country would follow the rest of the world in implementing restrictions, the APNU+AFC and their surrogates would have concluded that the attempt to rig had failed and now it was time to put Guyana first because we were facing a pandemic and people will die if the unnecessary rivalry continued under those circumstances.
This was not to be. In 2020, this country was literally on the precipice facing the prospects of unthinkable election related violence and the hunting tentacles of a pandemic. But certain politicians and tribally inspired people didn’t care if Guyana went down.
I heard and read about people saying Pompeo had a motive in the election drama. Just check out those people who echoed that viewpoint. Their class position bears not even the remotest resemblance to the young cashier with three children who looked up at me with vacant eyes during the election rigging and said, “Mr. Kissoon, I live at Good Hope, and I have to come to town to work, I’m scared.”
Read the newspapers and you will see in which countries those that criticize Pompeo live in. No not Guatemala. No not Sudan. No not Haiti. But in the US and Canada. If Pompeo didn’t step in, then our institutions would have collapsed. Ten years from now, when you run into these Canadian Guyanese and American Guyanese, and you say: “Oh how are the children?” Then you will hear which job they have on Wall Street or in the airline industry and what year they graduated from Harvard and Yale.
Talk to these people. I’m sure you have at some point in your life. They never fail to tell you what they achieved after they left Guyana. They never fail to mention the wonderful jobs they and their spouse acquired. They never fail to serenade you with the top class education their kids acquired.
While in Guyana, unelected governors would have been unable to find money to fund our high schools muchless our only national university. Guyana survived 2020 because people like Pompeo saved this land from the return of Burnhamite dictatorship. Let me say with pellucid glow, I don’t give a damn what you think Pompeo’s motive was. I don’t want to know what his motive was. I am interested in his direct intervention in saving my country. I live here. This is my only country. It is not my adopted homeland.
I make no apology and will never make any future apology about the role Pompeo, the American, Canadian, EU, British diplomats and the CARICOM Heads played in helping Guyana through one of its most dangerous crises in both colonial and post-colonial times. Those who criticize Pompeo should show some moral obligation and return to their birthplace and help shape a future for this young nation.
I remember a Guyanese-Canadian professor in Toronto writing a letter in the newspaper about how she has tenure at her university. That means she has a permanent contract. She isn’t coming back to live and work here. She is not leaving the big bucks, which she earns at her university to work at UG. What she knows about Guyana and how we feel about the strategic assistance Pompeo gave this country when it desperately needed a helping hand?
The year 2020 has gone into history. Guyana has survived. We are reading about how many top class hotel franchises are coming to set up shop. We are reading about huge foreign investments. We are reading about intended free UG education. We are reading about a vast economy based on oil revenues. Ask yourself if that would have been possible in January 2021 if we had leaders who cannot be changed. When leaders cannot be removed, the pathetic and pathological power degeneration is logical. It happened throughout history. It happened in this land from 1968 to 1992.
If you look back at 2020, you will see the innate depravity of the human mind. People put ethnicity and power in front of their country. In 2020, Guyana was reeling from a double whammy – election rigging and COVID-19. We must not forget and forgive those who sided with evil. They do not deserve to be part of any future narrative about a united Guyana. I close with an assertion – Pompeo saved Guyana. I make no apology for that statement. Not now. Not ever.

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

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