Remake of ‘Soylent Green’ starring Bharrat Jagdeo.
Mar 14, 2017 Source
There is a 1973 science fiction movie named Soylent Green. It was about what pollution did to the world in 2022. The world falls apart with destruction all around. People hunt in the streets for food. All the streets and highways are overtaken with mountains of debris. One assumes that a good percentage of Guyanese who saw that movie in 1973 when they were young are still alive. There was a scene in that movie that bore an uncanny resemblance to the streets of Georgetown when the PPP ruled.
That science fiction movie projected what will happen to the globe in 2022 but it happened in real life in Guyana in 2014. If you lived in Georgetown in 2014 and you had seen Soylent Green in 1973 your mind would have gone through a weird transformation. Georgetown under Mr. Jagdeo’s 15-year-old hegemony was what the writers of that film saw happening to the world in 2022.I saw streets, highways and roadways in Guyana overtaken by garbage that was simply beyond imagination.
This was what Mr. Jagdeo brought Guyana to. No one who thought of investing here or returning to live after retirement could have missed the Soylent Green effects in Georgetown and Guyana. I thought it was only Georgetown that had the unbelievable sight of ubiquitous miasma until I saw a horror show at Rosignol. I will never forget what I saw in Rosignol.
When I read that Jagdeo told the dinner of the Guyana Manufacturing Association last Friday that he wants the PPP to return to power, my mind flashed back to that Soylent Green sight at Rosignol.
The car pulled up a few yards before the Rosignol stelling. On the southern side of the road the entire stretch of parapet was overflowing with garbage, debris and animal feces with dozens of pigs in the middle of the mountainous miasma enjoying themselves. This was a country in the 21st century. The president at the time was Jagdeo and that very man wants to rule Guyana again.
Stink, rotten garbage destroyed Georgetown under Mr. Jagdeo’s tyranny and this man had the temerity to tell his audience that he wants the PPP to come back to power. If Jagdeo had the temerity to say that, the diners had the mental vacuum to listen to that depravity.
Mr. Jagdeo told his listeners he is at a loss to understand where the country is heading. The country knew where it was heading under Jagdeo and that was the abyss and that is why the country voted the way it did in 2011 and 2016. Where were those invitees when this oligarch ruled Guyana? The invitees were mostly business people and their families.
Wasn’t it under Jagdeo Guyana became the country with the most expensive kilowatts? Wasn’t it under Jagdeo that UG collapsed? Wasn’t it under Jagdeo that the waiting period at A&E of the Georgetown Hospital was ten hours? Wasn’t it under Jagdeo that private school multiplied rapidly because public schools were in a terrible condition?
Wasn’t it under Jagdeo that our exchange rate reached $200 for one American dollar? Wasn’t it under Jagdeo that you could not distinguish the underground economy from the formal economy? Wasn’t it under Jagdeo that a known drug trafficker, now jailed in the US, had undue influence in the police force? Was it not under Jagdeo that then Prime Minister of Jamaica, Bruce Golding, described Guyana as an international beggar?
Was it not under Jagdeo that the sugar industry died? Was it not under Jagdeo that the NIS from 2013 began to pay out more money that it earned because Jagdeo wasted $6 billion of NIS money in a failed venture with a failed Trinidadian tycoon?
One could go on. The point is that this is the man who told the GMA diners that he is wants the PPP to return to office. Now mind you; in that address not even a tiny apology was offered for the oceans of failed policies and outlandish spending under Jagdeo. What future this country had under Jagdeo when he took billions of dollars from the Treasury and built a hotel.
Didn’t anyone at that dinner had the courage to say to Jagdeo, “But sir, with the need for a strong manufacturing base, the need to fix GPL, the need to have thriving diversified agricultural sectors including aqua-culture, why did you want a hotel?” I wonder if anyone in the audience had bought a house lot in Pradovile 2 courtesy of Jagdeo. Maybe they have, that is why they invited him to address them.
