A great thing about life I learned living in Guyana
Freddie Kissoon Column
Kaieteur News
May 15, 2007
As a teacher, a columnist, a public figure and someone occasionally embroiled in controversy, I meet countless citizens of this country everyday. They come from all classes, all types of social backgrounds, all types of religious denominations.
Over the decades, valuable lessons of life are learned from these endless encounters. One of the great things about life that has made a lasting impression on me living in this land is that the most uneducated person has an educational opinion about what is happening in their country.
Humans are conditioned to accept that learned men and women have a more informed viewpoint about life's phenomena because, after all, they are educated people. Indeed, this is a valid point but the dull, the unwise and the uneducated do have a sound understanding of what goes on in their country.
It may just be a rudimentary insight, but, nevertheless, they have a working knowledge on the things that take place in their homeland. It is against this background I continue my point about the vanishing American non-immigrant visa.
In yesterday's column, I took the position that if we are going to get the American Embassy to change its' hardened and unreasonable attitude towards visa applicants then we have to (a) face some unpleasant realities and (b) ask ourselves some hard questions about Guyana.
I have dealt with the realities in yesterday's essay. Today, I look at the nature of the unchanging political environment and how it has shaped the perception of this country of the American visa officers.
It certainly is a return to hell, a hell we once endured in the seventies and eighties when the Canadian High Commission and US Embassy became wary of Guyanese visa applicants. People were fleeing by the thousands. Even the consular officers in the British High Commission were reluctant to grant visas because Guyanese were not coming back to the misery they were running from.
We have certainly come full circle with this American visa snub. It has been fifteen years since the talk of Guyana being a desperate, poor country with no democratic elections. That was fifteen years ago. How come the US Embassy is treating Guyanese the way they did as when Guyana was a land of collapse?
The reason is that the US Embassy sees fleeing people at their doors in Young Street, Kingston, and they know these applicants are not coming back (of course a fair percentage of them are bona fide applicants and the US Embassy is bound by fundamental appreciation of natural justice to award them their visas – the US that says that it wants to spread democracy around the globe, then surely, it should apply democratic treatment to those that would like to visit the US).
The accent should be on finding a reason for this tragic decision by the majority of Guyanese to want to leave, rather than knocking the US Embassy.
The US Embassy is reacting to a reality in Guyana. That reality is that people believe that Guyana is a political deformity that is unchanging and it is best to leave this country forever. The sad thing about this feeling is that it is true. I refer to the perception of the common man in the street that Guyana is a country where political stability will never come. Now, the common man may not be able to explain that. He may not be able to express himself about it in ways that are coherent and straightforward. But inside his psyche, the average Guyanese, the uneducated Guyanese, the semi-literate Guyanese know and feel that Guyana is going nowhere.
How does one explain the fact that fifteen years after we became a sound polity and a sound economy, Barbados still treats Guyanese as if Burnham is ruling this land. This is irrational, unbelievable, amazing, bizarre and macabre. How does one explain that Guyana is the hardest country in the CARICOM family to get an American visa? How does one explain the statistics of the World Bank that 80 percent of UG graduates leave these shores for permanent residency in foreign territories?
How do you explain the fact that of all the countries in the world that have endured the exodus of its people, the UN General Secretary, addressing the UN findings of migration, found it appropriate to mention Guyana as a country that is haemorrhaging?
We are in the year 2007. Burnham and his destructive ways are gone. Gone since 1985. We are in 2007, the PNC no longer rules over us. We are in 2007, where fifteen years ago the PPP under Cheddi Jagan, then Janet Jagan, then Bharrat Jagdeo have been in control, yet look at the movement of people out of this country. It cuts across all types of occupations, all types of classes, all types of races. Take Berbice. The statistics are almost incredible. Berbicians are just leaving. When I worked at the Berbice campus of UG, I saw the empty houses. Earlier this year, I was in Berbice. The signs are everywhere. Berbicians are leaving.
Now let us connect the eighties with the present moment and see if we can sustain the point of Guyana being an almost failed state. The Canadian High Commission in the early eighties transferred their consular services because of corruption and fraudulent activities. Now we come to the horrifyingly incredible part of Guyana's tragedy. Twenty-seven years after the Canadians did that, the Americans have said they are deluged with bogus documents and they are not accepting even a scrap of paper as supporting evidence for a visitor's visa. Why is this happening to Guyana?
The reason lies in our politics. The African Guyanese, the East Indian Guyanese, the poor Guyanese, the wealthy Guyanese all feel that this country is caught up in a never-ending conflict between the PNC and the PPP, and in the fight for power Guyana will be left behind. So they want to get out.
The lovely things that Buddy Shivraj, Lennox John (City Mall and Splashmins) and others have done will not make them stay. The Providence Stadium, the lovely airport renovation, the introduction of Digicel here and other fabulous developments will not deter them from leaving.
Poor, ordinary, uneducated people in this country, in their own way, know that something is eerily wrong with the politics of Guyana and they want to get out. Unfortunately, the US Embassy knows how they feel and where they want to go to.