Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 04, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
I am fond of the island of Wakenaam. That is where my wife has her roots. Though born in Wortmanville, her parents were from there. She spent her school holidays there every year with her aunts, uncles and cousins. The population of Wakenaam has declined drastically the past forty years; perhaps to less than fifty percent of what it is.
It is doubtful that it will remain a viable agricultural settlement the next twenty five years. Migration has literally emptied Wakenaam.
One of the most enduring characteristic of Wakenaam is that since Dr. Jagan came on the political scene, Wakenaam has returned a ninety eight percentage vote for the PPP. When I read yesterday that farmers there stood to lose dozens of millions of dollars in rotting crops because the ferry that served the island “mystic” (to use Rasta language) since Friday last and up to Wednesday morning there was ferry service, I couldn’t help smiling.
It is morally repugnant to take lightly the suffering of people especially the poorer classes but I just couldn’t help a little laugh.
Guyana is a goldmine for those who want to study the rich layers of the Freudian tragedies that are buried in the cemeteries of people’s minds. Let us digress in a relevant context and come back to Wakenaam. I traveled with an AFC delegation in early 2012 to have a firsthand look at dust pollution from a rice mill in Cane Grove.
The citizens were irate. They told us that the situation has been tormenting them for over ten years and that they complained to the President and right down to the office attendant at Freedom House but their torture went on.
To understand these villagers’ plight you have to see what happens when the rice mill is in operation. Within minutes your windscreen is plastered. Weeks later we returned to see a more frustrated village; nothing had changed. Khemraj Ramjattan discussed with them the possibility of taking legal action.
Now read the words to follow. These visits were just after the November elections. Yet in Cane Grove the PPP won. If the dust monster was attacking them for ten years it meant their voted masochistically in 2001, 2006 and 2011. Even though they complained to politicians who could have stopped the pollution, they returned to power in three consecutive elections the very politicians that ignored their pleas.
Still months later, I was returning from Berbice with Gerhard Ramsaroop and Kojo McPherson and we stopped at Nauth’s gas station in Unity to get a few sodas. This young man came up to me and was angry. He said that he is still waiting on the AFC to help the villagers with the dust problem. I was less diplomatic than Ramsaroop and asked him which party he voted for in the 2011 elections. He said the PPP and I lost my temper.
My point was that he put into power the very people who refused their request to stop the pollution but the AFC must do it. This is what I mean by the Freudian tragedies buried deep in the inner recesses of the minds of certain sections of the Guyanese nation.
Back to Wakenaam. I will take a bet with any Guyanese that if an election is held tomorrow, Wakenaam will vote in a large way for the PPP. How do you explain this psychological nihilism which can also be described the abandonment of the spirit to masochistic self destruction? If people vote on issues rather than on race and personality, they free themselves.
No greater example of this is the Hispanic voters in the United States. They went for Obama in large numbers because while Obama supported legislation on immigration that favoured the Hispanics, his opponent was anti-immigration.
Yog Mahadeo, the former CEO of GT&T sent me an e-mail last year to say that I was too harsh on the residents of our community where we both live. Yog’s e-mail to me was in response to one I sent out when the residents were asked for their financial support to repair the roads in our community.
It is the most terrible network of roads anywhere in Guyana. These roads destroy your vehicle. The community has been begging the entire Cabinet since 2005 to fix the streets and the Ministers have been contemptuous in their rejection. I refused to donate any money, used harsh language to describe these owners and refused to have any relationship with them.
After the 2011 elections, I checked the GECOM comprehensive election voting results and the PPP won in this particular area where I live. The mind can be such a terrible thing.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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