Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 13, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Wednesday, May 11, was a tiring period for me. I spent half of the previous day in court at the conclusion of my case with Mark Benschop on two counts of traffic obstruction.
The verdict will be delivered on Monday at 10.00 hours. I spent the rest of the day working at UG. I wanted to rest up on Wednesday morning because I was tired, but I had to show solidarity with Benschop, Norris Witter and Lincoln Lewis in their court battle.
The phone rang. I had to take a friend to the doctor.
While waiting for his call, I just put my hand on the music shelf and took out whatever album I touched (I have an extraordinarily large music collection that you won’t believe). I lay on my bed waiting for my friend to call and listening to the teenage idol of the fifties, Bobby Vinton.
As I listened to “Halfway to Paradise,” my mind back to when I was a tiny tot and how crazy my big sisters were about that song in the sixties. It was a Vinton composition but successfully covered by a British teenager, Billy Fury. I think it is one of the really great romantic songs of yesteryear.
I got the idea for this column when I listened to “Halfway to Paradise” again. The song is about being so close to your dream but being equally far away from it as well. It can be likened to the story of the never-ending search by Berbicians for the magic their PPP gods have promised them since they began worshipping Cheddi Jagan in the fifties; a quest that brings them so close to but equally very far away from their prayers.
Here are a few lines from “Halfway to Paradise” that should help in understanding the false hopes of Berbicians
“I want to be your lover
But your friend is all I’ll stay
You leave me halfway to paradise
So near yet so far away.”
When the PPP paraded the spin-twins to Berbicians two weeks ago – Jagdeo and Ramotar – the President told his audience that the PPP (he used the word “we”) will not be side-tracked by criticism of the private media, but will concentrate on what the PPP continues to do – bring development to Berbice.
A simple question Berbicians must ask the spin-twins and other PPP mandarins when they trek their way to the ancient county again to beg for votes to give them five more years to add to the nineteen they have already chalked up – where is the development?
Where is the development of GuySuCo in which Mr. Ramotar has been on the Board for an extensive period? Mr. Jagdeo has been in charge of for twelve years and Robert Persaud for five years. The development tsars of the Guyana Government failed last year to collect six billion dollars from the European Union because they couldn’t submit their sugar industry plans on time. That was the pretext. Maybe the truth is the PPP gods couldn’t prepare it. How funny that the gods are in charge of a country that per capita may have the largest Cabinet in the world.
Berbicians must ask their party heroes, on their next trip, how far the six billion dollars could have gone to bring development to Berbice.
Here is another inquiry for Berbicians. Do they collect their NIS pensions after retirement? If the answer is yes, then development in Guyana is in trouble, because another six billion dollars is gone. The development “experts” took just under six billion NIS dollars, put it in Clico; Clico in turn collapsed and the money may never be collected.
If NIS runs into trouble in the next five or seven years, the present Leviathan who promised development to Berbicians two weeks ago, will not be around in the presidential seat to make himself available for questioning. Instead, he is assured of a retirement package so generous from the state that it is unimaginable.
Of course you can’t have development without modern facilities, and a facility that is an indispensable requirement for the preservation of civilization is electricity. My niece and nephew from Canada touched down for a week and were brutalized by daily electricity disruptions.
My daughter undiplomatically asked her cousin if she would prefer Guyana to Canada. You don’t need the answer. Berbicians, of course, know that they are indeed halfway to paradise. They have been at that point in 1992 and will remain there for another ninety years.
JAGDEO ADDING MORE DANGER TO GUYANA AND THE REGION
Apr 18, 2024
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