A nation that lives in fear
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
February 9, 2007
When the Kaieteur News became a daily newspaper, I was given the option of being its daily columnist. But was there material to sustain a daily column in a small, poor country with just under 800,000 persons?
I thought not. Then I wrote three times. I increased it to four times. Then five articles per week emerged. As I increased my pace, I found out that Guyana was such an interesting country that its political culture and social structure can generate more than a column a day.
It is about three years now that I have been doing a daily analysis for the Kaieteur News. I was driven to this frequency by one particular facet of life – the constant denial of justice to the poorer classes in Guyana . It cuts across all boundaries. These violations are perpetrated by the Government, business community, people with status and well respected organisations.
Fear was the only expression you found in this country under the government of Forbes Burnham. It was a dark time, when men and women whispered a voice of dissent only in their bedrooms. Guyana is a lonely country crying out to the world to free it from the fear that has imprisoned it for over half a century.
If you read Father Morrison's book, “Justice: The struggle for Democracy and Justice, 1952- 1992” you see how Guyana became wedded to a culture of fear that started since 1968 and is still with us despite five years of perestroika and glasnost under Desmond Hoyte and fifteen years of governorship of the PPP.
Father Morrison stopped his book in 1992. This was a historic year. Guyana had re-possessed the right to have free elections again and a government was freely elected. Father Morison could not in his wildest imagination believe that the struggle for democracy would have gone on beyond 1992. He is dead and gone but his book (which he autographed for my daughter) is a timely reminder that Guyana is a country whose soul is in need of redemption.
The pitiful lack of interest on the part of the Guyanese people of those that are constantly denied justice, has shown me that Guyana is still a country that lives in fear of victimisation by the government, and fear of those with influence.
What is deadly wrong about Guyana is that the emotional attempt to free itself from this entrenched demonic fear that Burnham carved into this nation is yet to be tried.
The stories of the brutalisation of the poorer classes that I write about follow me wherever I go in this land. Yet no one wants to publicly talk about some of the most blatant denial of the rights of many of our fellow citizens. It is so reminiscent of the grey and eerie Guyana under the Burnham dictatorship.
In Guyana , apart from AIDS, people are dying at a rapid rate from road accidents. But look at the conviction rate. It is sickening that a road pervert can drive irresponsibly, kill innocent people and nothing is heard about the cases anymore.
The more powerful you are, the more money you have, the greater the protection from prosecution. In an age where the computer is as ubiquitous as the telephone, someone can be on a criminal charge yet walk through the airport and migrate.
The court system tells the tale of the tragedy of this nation. I read a recent court matter where a man was not found with drugs but a smoking utensil. He was jailed for that. Young “Rasta” men are hauled before the court and their future destroyed because they were found with a little bit of marijuana.
The people who run this country and the well-off classes have learnt absolutely nothing the Mash Day jailbreak. Young, unemployed men are ending up behind bars for stealing things of inconsequential value. I thought about it several times that I should keep a diary of the violations people complain to me about.
A certain gentleman, for years now, told me that a road construction company accidentally bulldozed his house and the court ruled that he must be compensated. The firm keeps on getting huge contracts from the government yet this man is without a home. Each time he complains to the company, they ignore him. This is a foreign operation in Guyana . Obviously, they know this is a cowboy state where the rule of law is ignored by the government, much less by private citizens.
I want to keep lamenting on the wrongs that take place in this country and the need for us to dissolve the fear that is driven so deep into us. We must have a conscience as a nation. I will go on to write and write and if no one joins me, and I become a lone voice in the wilderness, I don't care. I never cared about society's perception of me anyway.
I know I set out on the right path a long time ago, brought up by two honest parents, and married for 29 years to an honest woman. They thought I had done the right thing. I believe I am doing the right thing.
There is too much suffering in this country. Too much hypocrisy. Too much abuse of power. Too much self-destructive silence. Too much psychic fear.
I am writing a daily column in the Kaieteur News in the hope that my fellow citizens can reflect on their own psychological incarceration that prevents them from realising their inner conscience.
We are afraid to tell the US Embassy when they are wrong with the unjustified visa denials because the Embassy will get vindictive.We are afraid to tell the Government they are Burnhamite because they will do what Burnham did and stifle business investment. We are afraid to tell prominent businessmen they are tax-dodgers because one day we may need a job from them. When are we going to stop being a country of fear?
It was such a pity that the Third Force was not successful at the last election in creating a parliamentary system of power-sharing, it could have helped in the exorcising of this all-consuming poltergeist of fear that eats away at the very foundation of this country?