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sunday, june 29, 2014
guyanatimesgy.com
Views Sunday Times Editor: Tajeram Mohabir Tel: 225-5128, 231-0397, 226-9921, 226-2102, 223-7230 or 223-7231. Fax: 225-5134 Mailing address: 238 Camp & Quamina Streets, Georgetown Email: news@guyanatimesgy.com, sales@guyanatimesgy.com, letters@guyanatimesgy.com
Editorial
F
The open skies
or the Guyanese public travelling to overseas destinations - and that is quite a large public when our small population is considered - we have gone from famine to feast as far as the options for jetting is out of the country are concerned. It was a situation reminiscent of the old children’s poem, “Ten Little Indians”. One mishap after another decimated their numbers - until “there was none”. In our case with airlines, we went as far as “and there was one” - Caribbean Airlines. The consequences were unpalatable for the Guyanese traveller: of which the price gouging that doubled because of the monopolistic situation, was not even the worse. The scheduling was inconvenient and the disrespectful treatment occasioned to Guyanese travellers when they were forced to disembark in transit in Port of Spain, became legion. There was perhaps one bright spot: the Trinidadian Immigration officers did not distinguish between “high or low” or between “Guyanese or US citizenship”. Once you were of Guyanese origin, you received “the treatment”. For a year, even top Guyanese government entreaties to their counterparts in Trinidad, fell on deaf ears. But that indignity might finally be coming to an end, with the arrival of a slew of airlines into our skies. Maybe our seven years of flying famine is over. We now have Caribbean Airline, which at least stuck with us, joined by TravelSpan, Fly Jamaica and in the offing, Dynamic Airline, InselAir, Suriname Airlines and the Panamanian COPA Airline. While the government has uncharacteristically (for governments) not tooted their horns, their expansion plans for CJIA must have something to do with this influx. As we noted, Guyana has a large travelling public. Most of this is due to the recently confirmed fact that there are now more Guyanese outside of Guyana. And unlike the past, because of advances in communication, that expatriate population is in constant communication with their relatives in the country. It is not now a matter of Guyanese only “coming home” but about as many visiting their relatives abroad. Today, there is nary even the most remote village of Guyana from which individuals have not visited “foreign”. There is now a constant two-way traffic in and out of Guyana. But the expansion of CJIA adds another dimension to the airline industry in Guyana. The conceptualiser of that project, former President Jagdeo, saw what most persons somehow missed even though they must have looked at the same world map as he did. But while they looked through the traditional lens gazing North, he saw that Guyana was geographically on “top” of Brazil and in close proximity to a wide swathe of northern South and Central America. Guyana could be transformed into a hub, for instance, for flights into Northern Brazil, the Caribbean, Florida and further north. Thousands of miles of traveling, and a like amount of jet fuel, would be avoided. Looking from a wider perspective, in addition to Brazil, there is a market to be serviced in the other BRICS destinations of South Africa and India - the latter via Mauritius. When we look at this scenario we realise that our skies are not as crowded as they might appear. It is our hope that this is the perspective that the new entrants would take - especially as they vie for market share in this introductory phase. While the public might be tickled right now at the bargains they are picking up on tickets, they are only too aware of similar “boom and bust” scenarios in the past. The public will accept a reasonable, economic ticket price. While we cannot engage in price controls, the Ministry of Tourism might play a role in encouraging prudent decisions in this area. In the meantime we cite the unfortunate denouement to the efforts of one of the new entrants as an object lesson to all of them to proceed with caution.
Girls sit near mannequins displaying hijabs for sale at Tanah Abang market, ahead of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, in Jakarta, Indonesia. During Islam's holiest month, observant believers fast from dawn to dusk, and celebrate the end of Ramadan with the Eid al-Fitr festival (Reuters)
Guyanese want answers to why their nation stumbles through history Dear Editor, What’s the price for healing the Guyanese soul? Something happened to the Guyanese nation on the night of June 13, 1980. In one exploding instant, we lost our innocence. We inflicted grievous psycho-emotional harm to the Guyanese body politic. Today, our psyche suffers the stain of that dark night. Guyanese want answers to why our nation stumbles through history, and today, nearly 50 years after political Independence from Britain, struggles to develop. The Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI) provides a platform for such answers to come forth, for a semblance of justice to heal Guyana. The Commission is a kind of Freudian exercise in soul- cleansing. Just as an individual human person needs to introspect and exercise intellectual effort to build a good, solid life, a nation must also learn the art of self-healing. Making a nation is no easy task, and no one in the Commonwealth Caribbean knows that more than we Guyanese. The metaphor of the body politic applies well to a nation, to our country Guyana. Thus, the characteristics of a human being, of the body with its mental and emotional makeup, apply to a nation. Just like a sick person, crippled in his or her development at a young age, needs to learn self-healing, go through therapy, and know the mistakes of the past that caused the derailment of his or her life, a nation must also look back in order to pave the way forward into a workable, inspiring, developed future. In any nation, excessive political power leads to a grotesque disability of
the national soul, to a mental handicap. Excessive abuse of political power is a Machiavellian madness, a mental condition, a psychoemotional disturbance. Any human being in such a state would need intense psychotherapy. Any human being who suffered abuse causing such a devastating disability as a child needs intense therapeutic healing. The same with a nation like Guyana. The Walter Rodney CoI is the platform for Guyanese to exercise that psychoemotional therapy on the Guyanese soul, to heal the mental damage that decades of repressive rule under the People’s National Congress (PNC) dictatorship, lasting two decades, foisted upon the fledgling Guyana nation, which impact we still feel today, in governance, local communities and the devastation of our national institutions, including the State, Police Force and Army. This nation first blamed the British for our psychopathic socio-economic state; then we blamed the American imperialists; then we blamed the political parties. But we never sat down to rationally search our hearts, our minds, our souls, to introspect and exercise intellectual effort, to heal ourselves. Instead, we look for a punching bag to scapegoat, and proceed to beat it senseless, in the process beating up on ourselves – the very personification of mental disability. The Walter Rodney CoI seeks to heal that gaping wound that left its mark upon the heart and soul of the Guyanese nation, on that day, June 13, 1980, when we had become so barbaric and inhumane and low that we assassinated our own great: Dr Walter Rodney was a world-famous historian,
brilliant scholar and a liberator of oppressed peoples everywhere. He got his doctorate at the age of 24. This gifted Guyanese turned his attention to his own homeland, Guyana, to free us Guyanese from a tyrannical dictatorship Government. And we killed him. We used State resources and taxpayers’ money to conspire, execute and cover up this political, criminal act. But not only did we assassinate this gentle soul, we proceeded to carry on as a nation, marching into the future with this awful crime, this terrible psychic wound, on our conscience and soul and heart: the Guyana body politic for 34 years has limped around wounded. We need some kind of healing if we are to move forward. President Donald Ramotar convened the Commission not for his whim and fancy. In fact, President Cheddi Jagan tried since 1992 to perform this healing surgery on the Guyana body politic. But the French Government refused to extradite the main suspect in Dr Rodney’s murder, ex-Army officer Gregory Smith, from French Guiana, to testify. President Jagan had to abandon the effort. President Bharrat Jagdeo also made efforts, but leaders of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) asked President Jagdeo to put the Commission on hold because of the upcoming 2006 national elections. Finally, in 2014, President Ramotar successfully convened the Presidential Commission. These are the facts, not political, emotional, paranoid or prejudicial speculation. If the current Government displays any inefficiency or unprofessional conduct regarding the Commission, my view
is that it’s merely a metaphor of the state of the Guyanese society, the very thing the Commission’s work would aid in healing. For everything in this society gets tainted with inefficiency and unprofessionalism. Government suffers as much as the average Guyanese from our psychologically and emotionally dysfunctional state. If Nelson Mandela exercised wisdom to build a national platform for South Africa’s healing, from grave abuses of human rights and social justice, how much more should Guyana exorcise the demons that bedevil its soul? In Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa found space to perform necessary surgery on its cancerous soul, thus finding some psycho-emotional healing as a nation. Guyana has not set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but in the Walter Rodney CoI, we see the first step to exercise that Freudian psycho-therapy that will provide some healing of the gaping wound on our national heart and soul inflicted on June 13, 1980. Witness after witness at the Commission testified how free and relieved they feel to bare their souls of their roles in the events of that day. The CoI is a dynamic process. It cannot be fixed and rigid in its work. And that dynamic flexibility lies with the authority of the Commissioners, especially Chairman Sir Richard Cheltenham. The Commission cannot be accused of unprofessionalism, as not only are the three members distinguished Caribbean legal luminaries, but they are also well respected in their work in the Commission so far. continues on page 5