Self-anointed Elder, Hamilton Green, now enjoys the press freedom that he and his fellow headhunters denied the Guyanese populace in the heyday of the PNC. His constant outpourings about good governance and equal opportunities are best surmised in the book Treasure Island (by Robert Louis Stephenson, 1883): too late she cried, waving her wooden leg.
Green compares Guyana to what Kuwait has done with their oil resources and remarks: Scholarships are offered to attend approved universities in North America to pursue bachelor’s degrees and even Master’s degrees, tuition and allowances paid. Guyanese had to go to Cuba (while the local university required national service) and Russia. The latter as we know, produced a now divorced President who has anointed himself in Oil & Gas expertise. I attended University of Guyana in the same time period, and on the same scholarship, as one of Guyana’s learned judges who do not know in 2018 that the majority of 65 is 33! It took eighteen months and millions of dollars for the Caribbean Court of Justice to tell the PNC headhunters this; something any high school student could have done—for free. PNC children had similar privileges but were well rewarded with jobs in the upper echelons of the administration while their counterparts were dispersed in lowly public positions. In the words of George Orwell (Animal Farm): All animals are equal, but some are more equal.
On the issue of baby milk being gifted in Kuwait, local mothers had to contend with plantain flour; free health care was of high quality-not the type of Cuban medicine men in Guyana’s hospitals. Is it possible that the crop of infants who were born and raised during the 7 year period of banned food items (1978-85) have lesser developed mental prowess due to poor quality food?
Green epitomizes Saul the murderer in the Bible who somersaulted into Paul the Apostle. When a particular sector of the population was almost always, invariably, the victims kick-down-door Hamilton Green’s silence a form of acquiesce. The Elder held a variety of portfolios like minister of Agriculture, Health, Works & Hydraulics, Sports, Mayor of Georgetown and even acted as President! He had huge resources at his disposal to install the very facets of governance he constantly laments to be missing. Elder quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson: ‘truth is too simple for us; we do not like those who unmask our illusion.’ A simple extrapolation can include ‘we do not like those who unmask the truth in our past’. The fact that the country has the same population for 57 years since Independence, can be directly attributed to the marginalization of persons who dare challenge autocracy and express candid opinions of all past and even present regimes ; but this is the so-called snowball effect initiated by Green’s dictatorship.
A day late and a dollar short the former Minister of six portfolios under Dictator Burnham should also realize that the freedom to write does not translate to being correct nor the right to be taken seriously.
Leyland Chitlall Roopnaraine
