Latest update April 20th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 03, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I was so enamoured with this movie that I bought copies for some of my colleagues at Kaieteur News, including its publisher, Mr. Lall. As you would know the movie won “Best Picture” at the recent Academy Award last Sunday. I told my daughter the Sunday morning that the Catholic Church was too powerful in the world to let Spotlight win Best Picture. She also said, without prejudice that the homosexual society in the world is too powerful to allow Spotlight to win. But win it did.
Spotlight is not only an education on how the media protects the freedom of a nation and pursues justice for those wronged, but it also shows how important a country should take the recording of history. There is a part of that film that I pointed out to some of my friends at Kaieteur News what many viewers may have overlooked. The Catholic Diocese of Boston kept an annual yearbook on the postings of each priest. One of the biggest clues on the pedophiliac priests came when the journalists went through those yearbooks.
For each priest that was involved and reassigned outside of Boston there was an entry next to his name that says, ‘sick leave.’ This made the journalists suspicious. So many of them just disappeared because of ‘sick leave’.
I felt a deep sense of shame as a Guyanese when I saw that part of the film. As a trained historian you feel Guyana is a wasteland the way documents are treated in this country. The journalists at the Boston Globe went to the Catholic Diocese and went through years of old yearbooks. Go to UG and see if you can find any graduation booklet for the seventies. I donated seven doctoral theses in 1985 to Joel Benjamin, the then Head of the Caribbean section of UG library. All were on important aspects of Guyana’s contemporary foreign policy and post-Independence politics.
While lecturing at UG, I tried hard to find those books. I couldn’t; they were never catalogued. Priceless booklets, papers and documents were strewn all over the floor that people walked on at the National Archives when it was located next to the museum
This country is sad and tragic but you are kept alive by your capacity to laugh at it. When I heard that we had now banned used tyres, I laughed so much that I cracked a few ribs and had to be hospitalized at the dreaded Georgetown Hospital (just a joke). As a policy, there is absolutely nothing wrong in banning used tyres. But context is everything. You are banning used tyres in a used, second hand country. And what takes place in this country that is so modern that it has banned used tyres and stopped the importation of cars more than eight years old? Let us offer some tiny samples of what takes place in this second-hand country.
On the day of my testimony before the Public Service Commission, I submitted a research paper titled, “Ethnic Power and Ideological Racism: Comparing Presidencies in Guyana.” A large section of that research dealt with the public sector under the PPP Government. I used it as my defence in the Jagdeo libel writ. Since the Commissioners had to each get a copy, the paper, 70 pages long, had to be taken to the Public Service Ministry to be photocopied.
The Ministry does its photocopying at private outlets, so we had to travel to a private store on Croal Street to have it done. Leonard Craig and I went into the Deeds Registry for Craig to make a $200 payment for some minor matter. We had to stand in line because the cashier was occupied writing two hundred receipts for a particular company. Yes, she had scores of receipt books in front of her and was writing the receipts (I subsequently heard her fingers broke down and she had to get physiotherapy – just joking)
You cannot go and take a pee in a urinal at any Magistrate’s Court in this country. There are no such washroom facilities. There is only one urinal for members of the public at the High Court and it is in full view of the public and there is no sink to wash your hand. The toilet like the urinal is in front of everybody. In the police lock-up at Pariika and Leonora, faeces and urine fill the bowl. This is happening in a country that has banned used tyres because it is a very modern nation.
When I was courting my wife, we loved the Shirley Bassey version of a song titled, “Send in the Clowns.”
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
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