Who and where are these untouchable, golden men?

NOVEMBER 20, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

I promised my readers that intermittently from now to the actual day of May 26, 2016, I will be arguing the point that there aren’t scientific, economic and philosophical reasons for the people of this nation to celebrate 50 years of Independence. This column is one of them. Obviously the moral basis to celebrate exists. Fifty years is a milestone and the country’s leaders must inform their subjects that fifty years is a long time and that the country must acknowledge the importance of self-government. Outside of that moral ambit, what can the leadership and people tell themselves about the achievements, accomplishments and modernization benefits of Guyana? What roads have this country traveled that have been so modern, progressive and philosophical that we deserve to honour the day 50 years of sovereignty fall on? You ask any scientific researcher, architect, military officer, nationalist politician, and he/she would tell you that fifty years are a long time in which phenomenal success has to be achieved. Where is the phenomenal success in this country the past fifty years? My role is to analyze people, places and events. I cannot submerge my objectivity and conscience to proclaim my country has a super record of fifty years of fantastic development. Compared to which countries? The 50th anniversary thing came into my mind when I thought of the visa cancellation of certain gold miners. How can any Guyanese have any respect for this society when its level of absurdities has no corresponding match in the 21st century? Let’s go through the story of the visa cancellation. The US Embassy revoked the non-immigrant visas of a number of gold miners, because the Embassy said they were engaged in the illegal export of gold. In other words, they broke the law and the US found them ineligible to travel to the US. The curious part of this drama revolves around the question; did the US Embassy share any information with the Guyanese security authorities. If the answer is no, then I do not believe that. I go further and say no such fairy tale exists in the real world. Why would the US Embassy refuse to divulge the details, however brief, to the Guyana Government? Let us say the US Embassy did just that, then what would be the reason? It was the US that publicly announced the visa withdrawal in the first place. It meant the US Embassy wanted the nation to know it detected persons who have violated the law in a serious way. Having done that, the Embassy turns around and tells the Guyana Government we are not sharing the information with you. That is not the way governments behave and the US Embassy did not behave that way. My take on the scandal is that the Guyanese authorities have the list and are refusing to charge these people. We may be entering the second period of Jagdeoism in Guyana, but without Jagdeo. There are two possible explanations. One is that the information the security personnel received from the US Embassy is not credible enough to lay charges. If true, then the definitive conclusion is that the US Embassy acted without evidence. I am dismissing this angle. The second posit is that there are powerful players in the Guyana Government that do not want to have an investigation. This pathway has two branches. One goes in the direction of election campaign money so the golden men cannot be touched. The other branch in the road leads to political incestuous behaviour. Whichever of these two directions you take, it leads back to Jagdeoism and all that was inherently egregious in that paradigm, particularly the invincibility of the untouchables. So do we still have untouchables in Guyana after the fall of the PPP cabals? If the answer is no, then where are the charges against a group of gold miners who exported the metal illegally? This brings me back to the 50th anniversary of Independence. We have a country in the 21st century where the State Department of the United States cancelled the traveling privileges of a number of business people who have violated the laws of Guyana and the very government refuses to prosecute them. Is any citizen, on knowing about this, happy to be celebrating fifty years of Independence from Great Britain? Isn’t your country unbelievably weird and obnoxiously oligarchic? Oh those two French sayings that haunt all journalists; “toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite” – “every nation gets the government it deserves.” And the more popular one; “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” – “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”