The Coil: Loonies on the loose

By Vidya Kissoon
Angel shouted “Bheri needs a…” and the two dozen or so picketers outside the Ministry of Health in Brickdam under gray skies shouted “..a psychiatrist” .  The chant was not used for long because the word  “psychiatrist”  does not have the rhythm required for a protest.
Angel is transgender – or “batty man” or “anti man” as used as curses when the civilised citizens want to discriminate against people who they do not consider normal. Angel and Gulliver and other members of the Guyana Trans United provided the energy to keep the chants up for Bheri must go.. Who must go.. bheri must go.. ,  No Stripping.. No Slapping; Minister.. Women Abuse.. during the pickets against the Minister of Health this week.
Up to a few years ago, being transgender was considered a mental illness  in the United States where the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) talked about “gender identity disorder”.  And so it is that transgender citizens led the call for Bheri to go after he proclaimed his virility and diagnosed the woman he wanted to slap and strip as needing psychiatric help.
Abusers often tell the people they are attacking – you are mad. No one will believe you.
In 2011, a young Kevin Simon stuck his middle finger at the presidential motorcade and he was charged. There were protests. President Bharat Jagdeo had called the  group of middle finger protesters a “group of loonies”. “This fringe lunatic group needs something to keep them going from time to time and so I guess we have to oblige them to give them a chance to live too, to go and protest around the place,” he had reportedly said. President Jagdeo and his party have obliged the lunatics many times.  The sane majority have generally kept silent or voted and then kept silent after voting.
This week the insane were joined by some of the non-governmental organisations which had worked with the Ministry of Health at various times on various issues. There were a few people who never joined protests before. The insanity might be infectious. Last year, President Ramotar had declared that anybody who was against the speciality hospital had to be mad.  Sherlina Nageer dealt with the question of her madness last year when she suggested that high quality primary health care should be the priority and not the speciality hospital. Some of the sane people though, who admire the Minister but are horrified at his remarks have also thought that he might be tired from too much campaigning – a diagnosis which he did not give himself.
He has only proclaimed his best-ness with women. Such proclamations are not considered insane by many. Other sane people who are horrified feel that Sherlina was ‘rude’  and ‘out of line’ to question the Minister of Health. So many women who have stood up for themselves have been punished for being rude and out of line.  Sane people, women especially, are expected to stay in order and in line.
There might be some sane people who also want the Minister to go.  Like the strong young man who asked me quietly,. ‘Did you protest today? Do you think anything will happen to Bheri’. He knows the undercover police who were not so undercover who kept laughing as they took pictures of the protesters and the protesters took pictures of them. Laughing at the mad people. Or maybe they wanted to join the lunatic fringes.
I heard of a woman back in the 1970s who was wrongfully dismissed by the Ministry of Education. She alone protested outside the Ministry of Education.  Others passed her thinking she was a mad woman to stand alone outside the ministry. Apparently, the then Minister of Education, Ms Shirley Field-Ridley used to also pass her until she dealt with the woman’s situation.
Courtney Crum Ewing also stood mostly alone outside the Ministry of Legal Affairs to say Anil must go. Some sane and civilised people wrote letters and issued statements to say something like Anil Must Go, but never bothered to go and protest. Sane people who did not stand with him attended his funeral. Like me. One of his admirers who never stood with him but was active in his funeral said that ‘Courtney was at a different level, you could not keep up with him’.
A woman on the picket Friday said she wondered about mental health during elections. She wondered if the politicians start to lose it.  She might be referring to the paranoia and disorganisation on the platforms and the intense emotions around winning and losing which drive tensions high. She might be referring to the contradictions  – condemn the remarks of the Minister but still campaign for people to vote for him.  But she is one of the lunatics on the protest lines.
Rose Ann Barrow was a woman who was also described as mad by some people. She was shot on Homestretch Avenue by an employee of the Ministry of which Hamilton Green was the minister.   I was a child and I remember hearing and reading how Rose Ann Barrow in her madness had no fear of anybody including ministers.
On Friday, as the protest ended and the lunatic fringes dispersed, Hammie joined the protest. He became mad, standing on the bridge of the ministry where he was once minister. With his bodyguard. The bodyguard guarding the insane. Hopefully, the insanity as demonstrated by Sherlina Nageer and the protesters will prevail, and at no time in the future, Bheri would ever have to be standing at the gates of any ministry with a bodyguard to call on any minister to resign because of sexist or other vile behaviour.