These are the signs that Guyana has no moral fulcrums

Jul 22, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – No one can even dare question the immense wealth, scientific/technological stardom and global power of the US. But academia, educated people, mainstream media, politicians from all types of stripes in the US are writing and talking daily about the possibility that the US may implode.

Sociology and politics are going in directions in the US that are scaring the world. Crazy and incredibly negative things in the sphere of social and political life are taking place in the US with supersonic consistency. Can the US survive another Trump presidency and the domination of congress by the Republican Party?

A country’s existence rests on its social fibre, moral strength, philosophical values, ingrained humanity, sociological and political vibrancy. While the US remains the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country, those are not the traits that can prevent its implosion. It is the moral strands and social rationalities that hold society together.

One of the reasons why I have constantly criticised the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) is based on my own experience with the deluge of complaints I have received over the decades from Guyanese of poorer standing that need protection. You are not going to believe me but the process is a daily one with the latest being a complaint I received yesterday about back-pay being owed by the Ministry of Agriculture. I hope to discuss that with the minister who has always been open to solving these kinds of issues.

I have constantly said to people that I cannot pursue all these grievances because they tax my personal funding. Every cell phone inquiry I make, every mile I drive, I have to pay the cost out of my own pocket. I have to leave my home and family to go to places to investigate. What is needed then is an organisation, like the GHRA, to pursue these pleas. An individual cannot do it unless he/she is wealthy and loves to spend his/her wealth correcting wrong-doings. I am not in that category.

This country per capita, perhaps, has the largest amount of complaints about terrible things done to them by state actors, business people, politicians, the police, among others, and they do not move the conscience of people. It tells you that the society lacks humanity.

I will never forget a magistrate jailed a teenage girl for leaving Guyana illegally to get to Suriname by speedboat which Corentyne folks have been doing for over a hundred years now and not one human in this country even glanced an eye on this tragedy. In a living society, many voices would have been heard and there would have been an advocacy for removing that magistrate.

If you want to see how spiritually and philosophically dead Guyana is then look at UG. For the past 40 years, UG academics have not addressed the questions that any society seeks. In any living society, citizens seek out the academics to explain and interpret burning questions. It is a natural process in any society.

Go to the letter pages of the newspapers the past 45 years in this country and you can count on your fingers how many UG academics offered their take on the seminal issues that penetrate the society. This is different from perhaps all the countries in the world.

Once social eruptions disrupt societal stability, academics are the first to offer analyses and interpretations. This reaction is completely absent in Guyana. No country in the entire world has invisible academics as we do in Guyana. In a society that is penetrated by conscience, debate and discourse and competing narratives, people do not stay silent as the citizenry in this country do.

A woman wrote that one of the post offices on the East Bank of Demerara  required her to write her daughter’s phone number as a requirement for posting a birthday card to her daughter. Once that letter was published, in any other nation, there would have been a deluge of denunciations. It didn’t happen here.

The tragic dimension of this sordid culture is that this thing seeps into the psyche of people where it attains the status of normalcy. And thus people no longer feel it is vital to express feelings about wrong-doings.

They see such an attitude as normal. Countless numbers have complained about mistreatment by the banks, UG, traffic cops, GPL, GWI, GTT, GRA, etc., but you do not see a letter in the press. And if you do, it is one in every two years. The consequences of such a social landscape are that people lose their perspective on life and the inevitable result is that they become mental slaves. (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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