Coil: How much betrayal can a nation handle in a week?
The young taxi driver said as we were on Camp Street “even dough’ money aint moving, place still feel light” .. I say ‘whuh yuh mean.. wondering if he had a lil smokes before he pick me up..
“Light. You know.. place clean, at least de place clean, de heaviness gone.. money aint deh but de place clean.. “like when yuh clean yuh house”.. “light up de place”
A politician on Facebook put up something about how everybody talking about an upcoming concert and I started drafting a response about circus in the time of economic downturn and ministers’ salary hike and then I decided what the hell, people can do their own cussing.
But the taxi man, I mean, it is not that a clean environment is meant to be as distracting as say a circus. This week, the Canadians said they wanted one of the members of a popular team of organisers of circuses for drug runnings.. the man described in this GEM July 2011 article about the Hits & Jamz trio as “an essential part of the team’s success’.
Hits & Jamz is big in Guyana. On the day that one of their founders is on the run for cocaine, the Kaieteur News describes another founder as “respected by the masses” and the company as “..one of the most influential forces in the local entertainment industry..” which has “..secured positions in radio, pageantry, television, party promotions, award shows and now a water park… “. Everybody likes them – I mean if anything could unite this Government with the previous Government is Hits & Jamz who could access the Presidents and influence the masses.
Here are President Ramotar in 2014 and President Granger in 2015 with participants in one of the events organised by the team whose success was built by the man who the Canadians want for drug smuggling.
How would the charges being made against one of the founders of Hits and Jamz damage any of the potential for love and unity across the political spectrum and entertainment for the masses? When would the media which has reported so much and so well on Hits and Jamz be reporting on any betrayal felt by Guyanese?
I mean how much betrayal can a nation handle in a week?
Some other Guyanese, maybe some of them who are bothered when founding members of influential organisations are wanted for cocaine , felt betrayed when it was announced that the Government had no apologies for raising the Minister’s wages to levels where they would not be vulnerable to tiefing.
I thought that the opposition media was telling lies.
I feel less bothered by hearing the Canadians issuing the call for a man behind one of Guyana’s success stories, than learning that Minister Cathy Hughes reportedly said in this Demerara Waves report that “it made better sense to pay the ministers well rather than open up to corrupt deals and violate the ministerial code of conduct.”
I know I did not vote in 2015. I know that human beings are fallible. I know many people who I stay far from, but who I would put my head on a block to say they would never tief. I also know a few people whose company I would enjoy who I am sure would tief. I watched a movie on the internet this week – but I could afford to go and see it at the cinema but it was not showing.
But when one of my favourite Ministers who I did not vote for, implies that Guyanese have leaders who have to be paid not to take bribes, it gives rise to bizarre questions. Questions like, misquoting from Ruel Johnson – do we have to pay Sabga Award winning Sidney Allicock and world class scholar Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine 10.4 million Guyana dollars a year so that they will not be vulnerable to corrupt practices?
Does Prime Minister Nagamotoo need 20 Million dollars a year not to tief? Is the state media so potentially lucrative to inherently corrupt public officials?
And is President Granger exempt from this justification of the salaries increases?
And how much money would the Government, with their concern about crime prevention, how much money would they have paid to the young successful entertainment entrepreneur so that he did not end up on a wanted list from the Canadian police for cocaine?
The betrayal is felt further with the assault on my middle class values. With my racial and class prejudiced self, I had hoped, with my deeply ingrained coolie inferiority complex that red people especially have class as in the colonial sense (and the President could carry off a Nehru suit much better than me) – and since lots of people have been using the word ‘classy’ to describe the Government officials and how they have more class than the PPP lot’ – betrayal because I used to believe that nice middle class people do not need to be paid to not be vulnerable to bribes.
Another taxi man, retired soldier, playing oldies and hymns on cassettes in his car. ‘Harmon was a sick man’ , you couldn’t mess wid he. Basically what he is saying is dat if yall doan like de wuk and yall want to tief, yall go lang . I paying yall enuff’ .
We talk about corruption and whether we have to pay people not to be corrupt. “Look, I know a traffic police, if he don’t make he month pay in a day, den sometin’ wrang’.
A young woman who will have a chance to meet with President asked me about some questions I would want asked. There are no questions really, the shock is deep. I am terrified that there is more to come. I never imagined that Ministers’ salaries will be judged on the basis of their potential to be corrupt.
Redemption must be in removing those increases. Redemption has to be in doing the necessary across the board with all public servants, police, teachers, nurses. Redemption has to be strengthening the anti-corruption mechanisms.
Two young coolie public servants, bright young people, are also shocked. They asked me if I know anything about the ‘5000’. I don’t know, I hope that it will be there for them. I don’t know if the public servants in Guyana will make demands based on the 10,000,000 and even 20,000,000 rates.
But Georgetown is cleaning up. The heat is drying up the grass and the cut grass is leaving dust behind. The bags of weeds are standing tidily. The young taxi man feels the lightness despite the economic problems.. many had felt light after May 2015 when the coalition came in. But the stagnant water is there.. lurking near the clean parapets.. reminder that not far from all that cleanliness, that lightness, there is a messiness, dirtiness which sometimes rises when it cannot be held back. There are plans to fix the drainage, to drain away the stagnant water. And so we have to drain away the madness which is deep in our governance systems which gives rise to leaders taking money to deal with their fallibility.
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