Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 20, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Did you read what the Mayor of Georgetown said after a rank of the City Constabulary fatally shot an accused that was mentally challenged in his back while he fled the city outpost?
If you are easily moved to anger by some of the characteristics of this nation, then don’t read her response to the tragedy. It will get you worked up, you will lose hope in your country and it will remind you that although some rich, big nations are as messy as small, poor ones, there are still some lands on Planet Earth that can be called either shithouse countries or shithole countries.
Here are the Mayor’s words; “This has brought more than one issue to light and there is a greater need now, more than ever before, to have the constabulary – if not restructured – to have training at all levels.
The Town Clerk has started the process of calling and writing to the national Police for training, so we are onboard together to ensure that all our Ranks are properly trained.”
The Mayor of Georgetown has been sitting in the Council for over twenty years and held the position of Deputy Mayor for a number of years. During that time, ranks of the City Constabulary have committed flagrant and despicable violations for over two decades, and this lady had to be aware of the conduct of these people.
But guess when the Mayor realized that these ranks need to have proper police training? And guess when her office sees the urgency to liaison with the police force to assist? After a young man was brutally beaten for a minor offence, then escaped from custody and was shot in his back while his mother was on the scene. You are forced to angrily say what a silly woman, what a silly country, what a sheepish population.
Let us now envisage some hypothetical situations and put the Mayor’s reaction in different semantic shapes. Very often in the afternoons, I cross the Railway Embankment and turn north on Conversation Tree road to get on the main highway (which I always refer to as the Atlantic highway or the old highway to go east to stop at UG Road to park and walk my dog on the Turkeyen seawall.
That junction becomes a horror story when the lights are not working. And the traffic signals seldom work at that dangerous confluence. We are talking serious non-stop traffic going east and west on the Atlantic highway.
For you to cross over from Conversation Tree road onto that highway is a deadly movement. I do it and I am extremely careful, but always in a troubled state when I attempt it. I suggest you be extremely careful. I would go so far as to say; don’t do it.
So someone prominent does it and is killed. Let’s anticipate the reaction from the relevant minister; “Well, there is a greater need now to look very closely at that situation to see how the lights can be fixed and to ensure some permanency in the fixture, we will have to treat the situation with the greatest of urgency.” Don’t those words sound familiar after the tragedy has taken a life?
The grass-cutters are ubiquitous on the public roadways. The dangerously flying debris is ubiquitous too. Let’s digress for a moment and repeat in these columns what social activist, Bryan Mackintosh told me. He related how one day he was weeding his yard and the cutter picked up a tiny piece of zinc and with enormous velocity the thing stuck into the wall. Bryan said in Brazil when the grass-cutters are at work on the parapets, they line the area with a piece of cloth at two ends. The flying debris is captured by the cloth and cannot hit passing people.
So someone prominent is permanently blinded by a sharp, flying metal. Here are the words of the relevant minister; “Well, this is a situation that we will now have to look at, we cannot continue with the same methods after what happened; I think we will monitor the situation closely from today and seek new ways of doing the job.”
My point? In a primitive land with primitive leadership, there will only be civilized, modern and commonsensical changes after tragedy strikes. We have seen this over and over and over again in this stillborn land.
I would like to end with the lines that I ended my Thursday’s column with. I am putting them in quotations’ “In an upcoming column, I will voice my condemnation of Trump’s racist dismissal of some countries calling them “shithole” or “shithouse” countries. But I know one such country.”
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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