The cruelties of dictatorship must never be forgotten--FREDDIE KISSOON

JUNE 26, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

The mighty Jagdeo has fallen. The invincible PPP has become mortal; time has moved on. But the pen must never do the same; the pen must stay with the past. The secrets of the past must never be buried. The exposure of human cruelty offers us valuable guides to the future. It is easy to say the PPP has gone, let’s move on with building Guyana. But to whom do these words apply? Maybe to the new government that has to perform miracles to save Guyana, but certainly not the average citizen. The people must be reminded of the casualties of dictatorship, because they need to know what happened to Guyana after Mr. Jagdeo and Mr. Ramotar took power and ruled this country for fifteen years. This is called the society’s right to know. It is also called the recording of history. Today the asininities emerging from the PPP about witch-hunt and removal of their supporters from employment are viewed as, and must be seen by Guyanese for what they are – asininities. The PPP can talk about witch-hunt, but the historian must write about dictatorship, because that is what the PPP became after Mr. Jagdeo succeeded Mrs. Jagan. We tend to concentrate on Mr. Jagdeo’s rampage, but he was not the only tyrant in the temple of power. There was a long list of PPP kings and queens who lorded it over Guyana. Robeson Benn left a trail of bully-boy excesses that we must not forget. Last Sunday, I mentioned the hounding down of little girls (probably children of single parents) selling bottled water on the Irving Street parapet. Parapet sellers were an obsession with Mr. Benn. This same Benn was oblivious to parapet encumbrance by the super-wealthy friends of his party. Mr. Benn drove into NCN and ordered that a calypso that was being played be stopped. Of course, it did occur to Mr. Benn that he could have called the subject Minster or telephoned the NCN manager. But in typical power-drunken style, Mr. Benn made his move. Benn’s infamy pales in significance with the dictatorial output of some of his colleagues. If the term oligarchic lord fits any politician in the entire world, it was Roger Luncheon. A close study of the attitude of Luncheon would reveal a leader overwhelmed with the instinct of possession. The semantics, output, style of Luncheon were that of a man who believed that he owned Guyana. He testified in the Jagdeo libel writ against me and this newspaper and his deportment was nonchalant arrogance. Without any emotion, Luncheon told the court that no African Guyanese had the qualification to become an ambassador. There were many who did, but Luncheon and his PPP colleagues decided which Guyanese got jobs in their own country. When dictators cross the legal line, they must be held accountable. We have had an authoritarian orgy where violence, murder and depravity made this country from 2002 to April 2015, the worst human rights offender in the history of the English-speaking West Indies. Could a theory be postulated that Guyana under Jagdeo and Ramotar had features that were more morbid than in some Latin oligarchies? Did the oligarch’s friends descend to the pit of power madness as we saw in Guyana? A super wealthy friend of President Jagdeo drove into his construction site, saw the NIS inspectors doing their investigation, and ordered their imprisonment on the compound. This barbarity was pursued because the businessman knew he had untouchable status because he was the friend of the President. Poor people are sentenced to jail by a brutal magisterial system for offences far less obnoxious than that. A remand prisoner, notorious for extra-judicial murders, was released from jail and placed in the 2011 election campaign. He was caught on camera destroying an opposition banner at Ogle. A prominent journalist has a clip taken with his phone of this very person on the lawns of State House during the presidential swearing in ceremony in December 2011. A Minister got into a domestic brawl and his wife ended up dead. The official verdict is suicide. The same Minister drove his car recklessly and careened into a citizen breaking both his legs. There was no police arrest. It wasn’t only Mr. Jagdeo who displayed the pangs of tyranny in a fifteen-year-old dictatorship. His friends and his ministers were also into the act. In a strange twist of fate, this crazy behaviour the dictators took into the election campaign with the chorus of slapping. An Amerindian teacher and a social activist were to be slapped. Then May 12, 2015 stepped in. The rest is history.