Bigamy: Guyana’s crime rate is no. 7

Jan 21, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Something is wrong in my country. Things fell apart since the split between Jagan and Burnham in 1955. The split got wider when Burnham ordered the assassination of Rodney in 1980.
The split extended its space when the Economic Recovery Programme of President Desmond Hoyte created humongous hardships in the society. The split opened up like a wide chasm after 1992 with the rejection of the PPP as the body to govern Guyana. From 1992, the orgy of evil violence that climaxed in Buxton from 2002 to 2006 literally destroyed the psyche of this nation.
The chasm became wider after certain forces in 2002 accepted a mental picture that the PPP will always win national elections. Then the split got even wider and deeper after 2020 when certain forces felt that history was repeating itself and the PPP was back in the saddle and will be glued to it for a long time to come.
This long Faustian journey from 1955 has literally destroyed the collective spiritual house of the nation. What followed from 1955 was the application of the Darwinian process of natural selection. A distraught, shambolic, Kafkaesque, resigned generation passed on the evolutionary genes to subsequent generations.
What happened then is that the society since 1955 has been one of psychological amorphousness. The post 1950 generation did not know and the post 1990 generation does not know what essentially life is, the purpose of existence and the role of moral values and individual moral obligations.
Out of this potpourri of confused conceptualisations of what people are and should be, the Guyanese society has no clue of what modern civilisation is all about and what are the requirements of humans in the world and in their country. What emerges then is a bizarre society where behaviour is irrational, illogical but life goes on.
People do not care how they drive. Professionals lack a sense of duty to clients. Hospitals see people as sources of profits. Public servants have not been brought up knowing what service to the people is. Police officials completely lack knowledge of how they must relate to society. The media care not to know what the sacred values of journalism are. Cricketers lost hope since the 1960s. Politicians see people as numbers to be exploited.
Skilled Guyanese cannot generate ideas on science, technology and agriculture that can shape a future for Guyana. We still have an invoice business community. School children were never taught from the 1960s onwards what society is all about and what their societal roles after graduation are. UG academics from the death of Walter Rodney lost the meaning of what academia is and what role scholars should play in society.
Out of this bleak journey a mental cul-de-sac is where the country is living. Out of this long day’s trek away from civilisation, the portrait is of a nation living in eras long gone with behavioural traits long dead. In Guyana today, the transaction of important personal things to be done in the wider society is still based on countless pieces of paper. Commercial banks are obsessed with pieces of papers. Supermarkets invade your privacy by demanding to see your bill.
Only the righteous Hindu pandit, Muslim mulvi and Christian priest can sign your pension form. Only an ancient society removes traffic signals and tells you to give way to oncoming traffic and you tell oncoming traffic “eff off.” Out of this maelstrom of vacuous spirits lies the comedy of errors and the errors of death.
A new year began with all the daily newspapers and three online news outlets carrying the photo of a man wanted for killing 200 Guyanese, or so you thought when his image appeared as a police bulletin. But when you read on his crime was that he married twice. An ancient society sees the crime of bigamy as serious as mass murder.
But that is only half of the picture. This crime of bigamy is in a country named Guyana which is number 7 in the entire world for criminal violence. If you don’t believe it, Google it. Guyana is at number 7. As Guyana entered the new year, a poor labourer died senselessly, cruelly and in ways humans don’t die in the modern world.
The entire media community referred to it as a freak accident. It wasn’t. He died in a manner that was expected in a country where people have lost the will to think. A construction site on the public road was left unattended. He rode into the aperture where steel rods were placed and one of the rods pierced his brain. In a normal country, the site would have reflective tape or reflective cones. The worst is yet to come. This is Guyana.
(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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