Horrible country in 2013

The year 2013 began on a tragic note. It was the largest sign to date that a malignant tumour has eaten up the conscience of this nation. In February, the Commission of Inquiry into the death of three protestors in Linden ruled that the shots had to come from the police. Yet 2013 passed into history without any police discipline. But the worst was yet to come.
Three of the five Commissioners were foreigners; two were Guyanese – retired judges Claudette Singh and Cecil Kennard. The Commissioners awarded the families of two of the dead men, US$15,000, and the third victim, US$10,000. It was one of the most contemptuous denials of the right to life since Guyana became a British colony.
Even if the foreign panelists could not be bothered with the value of Guyanese life, surely, the two Guyanese judges should have been more respectful. The people of Guyana simply accepted the non-action against the police who did the shooting and the immoral pittance that was given to the families of the dead protestors.
It was clear to any human rights activist that Guyana must have become the most sheepish society in the world and the police that killed three unarmed protestors went unpunished and there was no street protest. Go around the world to any country in Africa, Latin America and the developed world, including post-industrial, post-modern US, and you would have seen voices and bodies in the streets demonstrating against these unforgivable atrocities.
There was also a sad consequence of the Linden tragedy. In 2013, there was absolutely no movement on the right of the Linden people to have their own television station, which was one of the concessions wrested from the Government. Ask any Guyanese if that station would become a reality in 2014 and the answer would be in the negative.
One of the abominations committed against this nation in 2013 that went unnoticed as every other violation by the PPP Government, was the barefaced assault on the Guyana Cricket Board. Several leading officials in 2012 had their homes and offices searched and a mountain of documents and computers seized.
Then in 2013, nothing happened. No charges were laid. It is presumed that no fraud was detected. Yet financial impropriety was the reason the Government created an interim committee and sought to kill the present administration of the Board. It was obvious to any onlooker that the claim of financial fraud was the excuse for the politicians of the PPP to take over cricket administration in Guyana, a situation that ended in the ignominious failure last year of Clive Lloyd to become head of West Indian cricket.
If the year 2013 could be given a name, I would suggest the Year of the Shameless Hypocrisy of the Private Sector Commission (PSC). This is a body that has supported, embraced, endorsed and sycophantically sucked up to the worst regime the English-speaking Caribbean has seen – the Jagdeo/Ramotar reign – which has also produced morbid features that have exceeded the authoritarian nature of even the colonial government. This writer is convinced that if any scientifically based survey is taken among the people of Guyana, they would agree to be part of the United States or would welcome the return of British rule.
In 2013, the pendulum swung in the most disgusting and sickening of ways in this troubled land. While the PSC crawled its wormy way into the castle of a corrupt government, the general society moved away from any denunciation, any raised voice, any raised fist, and found refuge in the most pathological expressions of reticence and fear hardly seen elsewhere in the world.
It was the awareness of the sheep that this nation has become that galvanizes and encourages the regime to continue its excesses, of which the most conspicuous expression was the insulting five percent increase to public servants in 2013. The PPP Government knew full well that there would be no reaction from opposition parties and civil society.
As if to rejoice in the contempt they have for the Guyanese people, in the same breath the PPP leadership announced its meagre five percent, it boasted of stupendous growth rates for 2013 and more predicted for 2014. In Machiavellian terms, the PPP was telling public servants, the more the country earns the less we will pay you.
Finally, 2013 was the year of huge cocaine seizures but only the small fish were caught. It tells a long story of drug trafficking and who are really the conduits. When power meets the white lady, a failed state emerges, and Guyana was a failed state in 2013.