Guyana stories in 2015: Drama and Comedy

Jan 05, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Guyana in 2015 was a mixture of circus and tragedy. At times events combined both the comic and the tragic. At times, you couldn’t tell the difference from the comic and the tragic. It was both pathetic and silly that last year a group of anti-narcotics ranks from the police force got a tip and went to a home at Lot 72, Sandy Babb Street in Kitty.
In full battle dress, with big guns and an SUV fitted out with a full tank of gas, they swooped down on the house and arrested Anthony Taite for possession of one gram of marijuana. In case you think this is a typographical mistake, it is not; one gram of ganja.
More than one gram of weed can be found at most socialite parties and sybaritic escapades at pricey nightclubs in this country. But Taite’s house was raided for one gram of ganja. The street value of one gram of weed is almost non-existent when you think of the cost to feed Taite while he was on remand, cost of gas to transport him to the court house, cost of the police operation, paperwork at the police station and paperwork at the Magistrate’s court to process Taite for a gram of ganja.
This was what life was like in Guyana in 2015. It tells the story of a weird country.
Before the big raid on Taite’s home on Sandy Babb Street in Kitty last year, another Georgetown Street made the headlines in dramatic style. This was the famous Robb Street.
It came out at a High Court trial that a wealthy car dealer ordered a hit on a woman who earned her income as a nanny. The car dealer wanted the granny’s tiny, dwelling space for business purposes. In court, a confession statement was read out implicating the businessman. But the part of the drama that was anti-climactic was that the car tycoon wasn’t in court; he wasn’t even charged. That was Guyana in 2015.
The justice system in 2015 made the headlines in Guyana like tsunami waves. A car wash employee who defended himself in court was given 45 consecutive years for insertion of his fingers into an underage girl. Weeks later in the same High Court, a murder accused got 15 years for a violent robbery in which he attacked a businessman who left a bank with lots of cash.
The businessman’s handyman, a poor soul in his mid-sixties, was gunned down.
A “youth maan” who preyed on women and violently robbed them was finally caught in Queenstown, Georgetown. A Magistrate that I am inclined to put under the microscope jailed him for three years on four counts of robbery under arms.
The runaway train of crime in 2015 didn’t stop a powerful cop from visiting the casino at Princess Hotel every night in 2015. Two questions arose – how did he get in all the time when Guyanese are not allowed into the casino and secondly, how can he gamble each night with a salary of a senior policeman?
I did say above that in Guyana the tragic and the comic are sometimes intertwined. Bharrat Jagdeo shared out goodies to one of his constituencies in the remaining days of 2015 and told the old folks that Guyana needs racial unity. Here is a politician who chalked up the sordid record of publicly sprouting the most depraved racist vocabulary than any other politician in living memory and for which he found himself in the courts, hoping for racial unity.
But that wasn’t all. Before he shared out his Christmas goodies, his party’s General Secretary wrote the Election Commission for information on the ethnic composition of its employees. Why is the ethnic make-up of Guyanese employees who are entitled to work at any place of their choice was (is) important to Mr. Jagdeo’s party? That question should have been asked by one of those souls that received his Christmas gift.
It could be seriously argued that the second most tragic-comic event in 2015 after Jagdeo’s racial unity call was Winston Brassington’s exclamation that while at NICIL, he didn’t do anything illegal.
Most people had to laugh on reading that. Almost a hundred percent of the people in jail all over would tell you they didn’t commit the crime for which they were arrested. I cannot do a description of 2015 without the mention of Khurshid Sattaur.
An entire column is forthcoming on this man. It was good news for the country that he had gone. But I believe the nation will be traumatized and become inconsolable when they hear what the audit of the GRA reveals.

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Guyana stories in 2015: Drama and Comedy

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