The Ancient Mariner on the rampage

Sep 09, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Today, I continue with the publication of my speech to the 93 returning graduates, who days before, were addressed by the little dictators. I remind readers that I sought to speak to the graduates after a part of the official presentation carried a judgement that there is a section of the media that wants to destroy the future of young people. It is the most asinine emanation that could have flowed from the mouth of any ruling politician in this country.

How and why would a section of the media want to ruin the future of young people and in what ways could it do so? Below is the continuation from yesterday’s edition.

“I don’t need to wait for your answer on which capital city is the filthiest in the world. You know it is in your own country. Is this the future? The little dictators are going to lie to you all the time because the facts against them are as clear as a bright, sunny day. They will tell you the miasma that has smothered Guyana is the City Council’s fault. They are not going to tell you that the City Council has absolutely no power to raise money on its own. They are not going to tell you that they and their friends owe the City Council hundreds of millions of dollars. But there is more to come.”

The garbage piled up for weeks. It threatened the health of the nation but while all of this was going on, the little dictators were completing plans to fund three days of Jamzone in which tax breaks to the organizers ran into dozens of million of dollars. Are these the people you trust with your future?

While they were on their feet telling you about who wants to destroy your future, you should have asked them which section of the media exterminated the life of a young Guyanese villager by the name of Godwin Maxwell of Mahaicony. It was the very people who came here to talk about your future that took away the life of Maxwell. They hounded this poor fellow for a pittance over a yearly dance he held. But in the same breath they were sponsoring three days of Jamzone.

Let’s see what the future will be like for you as you get down to work in Guyana. Go to any house in Georgetown that is on the ground floor and look at the velocity of water that comes into the house. It is a trickle. At 20.00 hours, the water goes.

Guyana is a country of many waters but like in the poem of the Ancient Mariner, there is hardly a drop to drink. In Guyana, your water supply is best guaranteed by the purchase of black tanks from Trinidad. Even water supply does not come easily in our society. I need not mention the disappearance of electricity.

It is no exaggeration when I say to you that where I live we get a daily dose of black outs. They may not last for hours each day but there are there everyday to remind you that this is the future. This will be life in your country as you settle down to work. But why am I painting these pictures for you?

You saw them for yourselves before you left to study abroad.

What did you miss while you were gone? We still don’t have forensic capabilities as with the countries you lived and studied in. Murderers go free and they kill again. This is the future of Guyana not the encouraging one just painted for you days ago. That is propaganda that you will always here from politicians who have controlled a country for eighteen years and have nothing to show for those two decades.  From forensics we can step across to old age despair. Now some people’s future is in real jeopardy.

While you were out studying, CLICO collapsed. The little dictators that addressed you days before didn’t tell you that the pensions of many public servants may have been washed away by the Atlantic. The little dictators developed an enduring intimacy with the CLICO emperors. These dictators violated the laws of Guyana when they went beyond the legal limit with the country’s money that they invested in CLICO.

CLICO is gone and so are billions of taxpayers’ money. Is this the future they are lecturing to you about? Will I see you in six month’s time? I doubt it. As soon as you settle in to your job, when we do not see you often, we know you are gone.”