Latest update May 14th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 21, 2016 Letters
Dear Editor,
I fear for Freddie Kissoon’s balance and sanity. Like another fellow said: “I have supped full of horrors.” And later “here on this brink and shoal of time, we’ld jump the life to come”. Can you walking and sleeping, day after day 24/7 revisit, recount and share your sense of outrage, of justice mangled and trampled in this police/soldier state filled with spies and informers and thugs licensed for violence, murder and acts of humiliation and terror, manage to keep your wings for freedom?
Refusing to take on and be a part of 50 years of ‘independence’ celebration in an effort to cover over the pus of the national boil and carbuncle, canker and cancer, Freddie, you join hands with a few. Like the Musketeers, you form the liberal voice in a country where so many have chosen silence to protect their hard won gains. These form the well to do middle class that live in material comfort next to neighbours they have decided not to see or hear. They keep their heads down, eyes averted and unseeing, dressed in jacket and tie as they keep their doorsteps clean. They are content outside Pradoville but will speak knowingly in their waterhole parliaments where they solve all the myriad problems of Greater Georgetown and Guyana and satisfy themselves that they have met their duties as citizens and as persons immunized from all harm. They are not part of the liberal voice you raise everyday still conscious of humble and straitened circumstances in your origin driven to deny your Guyanese nature. These are the parasitic cow ticks on the rump of its society.
Yet in the middle of this pyramid of manure, murder, and all the accumulated perversities, there are comforts to be taken. The irrepressible Freddie Kissoon disregards race and ethnicity and bubbles over with vitality, passion, bonhomie, good humour, tolerance. He may even seize any opportunity to do random acts of kindness and generosity with no expectation of any return. He struts his humanity. He makes his day without the benefit of a 375 magnum. Even as we make feeble recognition of suicide and parade with children in tow who may have no idea of despair, apathy, depression and manic tendencies, we do not acknowledge a deeper disease underneath that runs through it all and no know of ways to return this society to good health. In their informal parliaments, some solace is found for conviviality. There are rules of conduct that lie above the myriad laws developed by the state that go above and are finer. These unwritten rules create spontaneous order. Most follow such rules regardless of police, soldiers and the state. This is what we must celebrate – the innate decency of ordinary folk.
Those children gathered by shallow thinking adults to parade with uniforms, banners and drums like good little soldiers are willing to follow orders in file and rows without missing a beat. These may have already been regularized and tailored into conformity, their inner poets already atrophying. Older high school youth move with confidence looking askance at all even their own peers. Elementary kids walk purposefully to school but play, razz each other on their way back. These will return a hello, a good afternoon singly or together glad to be acknowledged with respect. Their vitality and exuberance is enriching. This needs celebration.
‘Grassroots empowerment’ came and went. Our bureaucrats are beyond understanding how this can work to produce independence. They are determined to enlarge the independence of the powerful in private corporate bodies or the public state. They cannot release anyone from red tape to make their own life. The state and the powerful collude to continue policing with ranks and soldiers all mainly from one group to perpetuate dictatorship of central power. State police and private police live in a place where the rule of law has vanished. Senior bureaucrats and petty officers all salute the new ministers who already know everything. Allicock and Bulkan and one or two others show enough humanity and understanding for hope. Generally, tell, never ask because like dumb cattle just out of their logies or barracks they can never understand the high powered architects in commissions of inquiry and management including state institutions and the university. These seem stultified beyond reality puffed up with ordained power. Last night, the Wales workers can see that this exists in the upper reaches of their own union and refuse to be pawns in the power game. This refusal to be dumbed down and silenced is cause for celebration. The oppressed and controlled are not yet dead.
The poor have been ghettoized into Starbroek Market and Demico Square and adjoining streets. Here they market fruits and vegetables and cheap imported goods on the streets and pavements. They do not see becoming criminals as an option. Their genius shows in many ways. Selling juice in plastic bags, selling chicken foot and plantain chips show the ingenuity of these vendors; innovation and entrepreneurship in active micro-enterprise. Guyana is on the move looking after itself even in a cluttered, pedestrian minefield like this. Minibuses and taxis take the right of way not a second for those on foot, their likely customers.
The mini-bus system and the water taxis at Vreed en Hoop Stelling show what happens in the space that the state cannot fill. For whatever shortcomings, they may have, they supply a valuable efficient service. This is another cause for celebration. The more the state assumes it can create a society the more it is in error. The state is already over-stuffed with employees and as technology makes an offer no one is trying to refuse, downsizing will follow with efficiency gained from its implementation. The state will scrape every cent it can find but its promise of an oil bonanza is distant and no one has been able to get a fair return from any powerful resource exploiting corporation. Bauxite, gold and diamonds and forests all show this for a few jobs and small royalties. Unemployment and under-employment will remain unless there is a drive to empower these and other enterprise for self-employment. This is not to celebrate but to face the largest threat this society faces.
All those letter writers to KN throw risk aside and add thoughtful voices to debates and discussion. They throw in their contributions to add their weight to ‘Freddie Kissoon’s Dem Bwuayes’. This liberal voice is cause for celebration.
What kind of celebration could be mounted to salute the basis of independence, of self-determination, of Guyana. Neither Martin Carter or Walter Rodney are here. They have been dedicated literary heroes and activists. Let us celebrate their memory with our wet tears. Our prowess in sports is part of our legend and lives on in our recent accomplishments. Song, music, dance, theatre, public are all alive. All these are causes for celebration to move and inspire our youngsters to greater heights in a dynamite society and culture.
Let us “Cry the Beloved Country” but refresh our energies to create another rainbow country. All is never lost, my dear indefatigable Freddie. Your dream and spirit will see to that.
Mahadeo Bissoon
Listen how to run an oil country
May 14, 2024
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