2007 should be the year of the break with the past
Freddie Kissoon Column
Kaieteur News
January 15, 2007
Should the Government and the Guyanese people achieve success in hosting the Cricket World Cup in March, it will be a phenomenal endeavour for a small country. If the success becomes a reality, as a Guyanese I will be glad.
I am not a supporter of the ruling party (God knows its faults are countless) but a supporter of Guyana which like many countries in Africa and places like Burma need a future after a terrible post-colonial start.
However, if I were asked after the victory of the World Cup if my position two years ago remains the same, I would unhesitatingly say yes. A poor and impoverished (not small; countries can be small yet rich, for example, Singapore , Trinidad) state like Guyana cannot afford to host such a mammoth global event. The answer is commonsensically simple – we don't have the money. Money is needed everywhere in this place.
Early yesterday morning, I went to my work place, UG, to collect a few things from my office. It was early and the place was completely deserted, except a few kids playing cricket far off in the background. I don't know what came over me but as I walked out of my office back to the direction of my car, something told me to look around.
UG's physical infrastructure is pathetic. I saw windows that were thirty years old and needed replacing. I saw the windows of lecturers' offices that were grilled with dirty pieces of wood, giving the impression that they were dog-pens. I saw urinals that were so dilapidated that you hope visitors never use them.
The same appearances strike you in many other parts throughout this country. In some sections of Georgetown , sewage spills out into the streets after a century old system that ought to have been replaced years ago finally collapsed. Fittingly, one of these sewage collapses occurred right at the entrance to the High Court of Judicature.
While waiting outside Justice Yonnette Cummings' office one day, I looked up onto the ceiling of the courts and it is a large picture indicative of the ruin of the physical infrastructure of this territory.
The ruins are ubiquitous and remain so because there isn't money to develop this country. One thing is irrefutable – if the Treasury of Guyana had money, we would have built a Berbice Bridge nicer than the structure Suriname completed two years ago, and the dilapidated traffic lights would have been replaced and newer sites would have been developed.
If we had money, Carifesta Avenue would have had streets lights decades ago.
Against the background of this stench of impoverishment, Guyana cannot not afford to spend its limited funds on World Cup Cricket. No doubt, it would have been an immeasurable blow to the image of the country to tell the world that it cannot afford to host it.
But I believe the economic implications should have deterred us. Ireland is a good example of how a small, thinly populated country can make sacrifice for the sake of economic take-off.
Instead of bringing a Hindu priest to assist him, President Jagdeo should have invited one of the Irish economists that participated in his/her country's recovery. Anyway, it is too late now to argue over something that has happened.
I hope Guyana pulls off a stunning World Cup Cricket tournament. After March this year, we should sustain the moment of breakthrough. Guyana should move forward with more enlightened policies that would bring it into the future. The pace of modernisation has been too episodic. For example, the legalisation of abortion was a shining moment in the life of the PPP Government. But nothing in that genre has happened after.
This year, the government can pick up from where it left off with the abortion legislation. Though I support the introduction of casino gambling (God, what a fuss about nothing), I fail to see the logic of excluding the Pegasus and Hotel Tower . This does not make sense. For 2007, I am advocating the unconditional upping of the 55 mandatory retirement age. There are things in Guyana that do not make sense. They make no sense at all. It is foolish and nonsensical to retain them. The 55 retirement age is one of them.
I do not think I need to convince any educated person that, given Guyana 's dwindling human resource base and Guyana 's horribly low pension scheme in the public sector, we need people to go beyond 55. But why is 55 years an old age? Is it in this modern world? At UG, the union has introduced a motion asking for the unconditional retirement age to move from sixty to 65 with the option to take it to 70.
For a university that for the past 25 years has failed to attract top skills, why is it sending off talented, experienced lecturers at age 60?
There are things that must be on the mind of President Jagdeo as each year goes by and his swan song comes nearer to his mind. He can make the next generation remember him by moving us further and further away from the old, primitive world that still characterise life in this country.
I believe that it was under the Jagdeo presidency that this country made a start with widening the tax collection system. VAT has enormous teething problems and mistakes were made that ought not to have happened. For example, certain goods bought mostly by lower income families should have been zero-rated.
VAT should not have started with 16 per cent but maybe eight per cent. But overall, VAT is a step in the right direction for a country that suffers a haemorrhage of about $6 billion in tax evasion annually.
The year 2007 should see changes to the repressive legislation in relation to the quantity of marijuana found on a person. But if there is anything apart from the retirement age that this country deserves to have, it is a far-reaching restructuring of the traffic laws.
My advocacy is that there must be a huge fine with a ten-year ban for dangerous driving. There must be a mandatory term of imprisonment beginning from five years up for the charge of death by dangerous driving.
The company that employs the convicted driver should by law be compelled to contribute to a compensatory scheme for victims and their families. President Jagdeo can begin to shape his legacy this year if he starts the breakthrough after World Cup Cricket.
Surely, President Jagdeo doesn't want to go out on an ignominious note like Tony Blair. Which reminds me; what has happened to the promised job for Moses (Nagamootoo)?