By Ryhaan Shah
We have been living in a state of high anxiety in Guyana since the 1960s. The main stressor is the racial/political divide which has kept everyone in a state of uncertainty and living with an overwhelming dread that we are not in control of anything, not our past, present or future.
One of the main national untruths that contributes to our high anxiety headlined the recent PNC Congress where the membership continued their attempts to rehabilitate the image of Burnham into that of a visionary when historical facts show him to be a corrupt and racist dictator who was propped up by the US Government and its allies for Cold War gains.
We, the people, have little control even of factual evidence when such distortions of history keep coming from the ruling PNC party and its leadership,
Many wanted the PPP/C Administration booted from office because of their alleged corruptions and arrogant behaviour. However, the Coalition Government’s promised change is yet to materialise and in just over a year, we have witnessed blatant corruptions for which no one is held accountable. President David Granger seems satisfied with his rogue bunch of Ministers and Advisors who are riding rough shod over the nation.
An apology for the “pharmagate” scandal is not enough. Health Minister George Norton should have resigned and displayed a modicum of personal integrity, or should have been sacked immediately. And all the cushy public service positions being held by family members and PNC cronies – and so many are already mired in corruption – should be rescinded and given to qualified professionals.
But since the 1960s, this has been the face of Government in Guyana. Public service is about rewards for party loyalty – or paramountcy as in Burnham’s time – and never about serving the country. Fifty and more years of corruption has created a national cancer that sickens everyone.
Vigilante justice, drunk driving, suicide, murder, hospital negligence, rape, banditry – Guyana has it all and at a level that is much too high for our small population. People are living on the edge which makes them trigger happy and unconcerned. If you are jobless and have no chance of gainful employment, the future is a zero sum total anyway so what does it matter if you rape, shoot, kill?
In undeveloped countries like Guyana, people rarely talk of future plans but are more focused on just making it through the day. The future lies elsewhere. It lies in migrating to New York or Toronto where government is held accountable. That is where progress starts: with good and just governance.
But the political upheavals and racial violence of the 1960s have simply continued and no government has yet had the vision or courage to lift us out of that state of uncertainty and dread that was experienced then and which threatens again with the planned rehabilitation of Burnhamist policies and ideology.
The oil find only increases the level of anxiety. The US and its allies kept the PNC in power to further their own political interests for three decades. Is controlling our oil reserves the reason to keep them there again? Is Guyana to be further destroyed to secure American economic interests?
None of that oil will be coming ashore here. It will be shipped off to Trinidad to be refined and given the corrupt state of our public officials no one believes that any of the earnings will be spent on development. They will most likely end up in the pockets of the corrupt and corruptible.
And to hear our politicians talk you would think that we should be proud of our continuing underdevelopment – so many billions to be “won” in loans!
It does appear that Government’s raison d’être is to rebuild the image of a failed dictator, their founder/leader Burnham, and going backward 50 years to revive failed economic policies is to be the forward thrust of the Granger Administration.
This as the rest of the world advances into a new century with technological breakthroughs and new ideas on conducting global business offering up opportunities for countries with progressive and, yes, visionary leadership.
However, the Coalition elections campaign succeeded with its propaganda to “forget the past” and Guyana voted for an amnesiac state of being. National Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan – a most vociferous supporter of all that forgetting – must be looking forward to all the “newness” of the PNC’s agenda. That as everyone else recognises it as a rehashing of the worst failures in Guyana’s contemporary political and economic history.
The high anxiety continues.
