The US Embassy teaches Guyana how to be a modern nation

There are literally thousands and thousands of printed analyses on the effects colonialism has had on the psyche of the colonial subject. Many scholars take the view that the psychic damage to the colonial subject is irreparable. And of course through a process of genetic evolution, the colonial subject has passed on his/her damaged mind to subsequent generations.

VS Naipaul is not a social scientist and has not done any scholarly work on the psychological effects of colonialism, but he asserts most violently in his writing that the post-colonial mind cannot, and will never be creative.

Since the Second World War, the post-colonial world has been a den of the most atrocious political and social miasma with the Arab world, India, the mandarin race in Asia and the English-speaking Caribbean being the most tragic cases. Parts of both Africa and Latin America have proven to be tiny exceptions.

Here in Guyana, the area I know best, European philosophies have had early implants, with Marxism being the most influential. But the colonial penetration has been so gigantic and profound that even Marxism failed in this country to save the helpless psyche of the post-colonial leader.

Here in this land, the primitive mind of successive generations of leaders has effectively killed off any thought of the emergence into modern society. Leave aside physical and developmental slowness , the since Independence conceptual backwardness that resides deep in the minds of Guyanese leaders and their followers can only be described as primitive madness.

One hopes that the recent decision by the US Embassy on the issue of renewal of non-immigrant visas will shame our colonially-driven population and their leaders to at least think about the psychic damage they have been living with since Independence and at least try a NEW START, not start anew. The US Embassy announced that it won’t be necessary for certain categories of applicants to appear for an interview when renewing their visitor’s visa.

Now that is common sense; it is a natural instinct which is yet to be discovered by those who lead hapless Guyana. Why would the Embassy ask applicants who have been in receipt of five/ten-year multi-entry visas over a long period of time to come for an interview whenever their visa is up? It makes absolutely no sense.

Similar commonsensical pathways are waiting to happen in this country but colonial values stand in the way of a making Guyana a modern country. Cabinet has to give direction for these changes, but we go backward instead of forward. Under this government, the ten-year life of a passport has been curtailed to five. What is essentially wrong with a passport that has a ten-year life?

A hundred years ago, to collect your pension, a category of five persons had to sign your form. Brace yourself for the stupidity of life since civilization began. The NIS and the University of Guyana have retained those five categories. Imagine that in the 21st century! To collect your NIS and UG pension, prominent citizens like journalists, engineers, lawyers, architects, rich businessmen, astronauts, computer geniuses, army bosses and a vast array of occupation-holders are not allowed to sign your form. Only people who fall into five categories can sign.

If you are an NIS pensioner and you are the maid of Adam Harris, the editor of this newspaper, you cannot ask your boss to sign your pension certificate. The poor soul has to go to a Justice of the Peace or one of those Cuban-trained doctors at the Georgetown Public Hospital, never mind the boss of the poor maid is one of the Caribbean’s most recognized media practitioners.

Imagine this is an anachronism that is a hundred years old and still obtains in Guyana.

Tell me what is conceptually wrong with having a driver’s licence that has a five-year life or a vehicular road licence that has a three-year life span? Imagine in the 21st century in Guyana, the courts cannot grant a divorce unless one of three reasons is given.

That is the law. And that law came into being in 1903. The colonial fools that run Guyana in 2014 cannot see that there could be a million reasons why a person would want a divorce. In Guyana, a woman cannot enter the courts if the dress she is wearing hasn’t got sleeves. Guyana jails poor youths for being in possession of a smoking utensil; not the drug itself.

I close by asking a question – does such a primitively sick country deserve to exist?