Coil: Flowers on Main Street and ice cream to avoid scholarships and fear

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

There is a part of the Main Street Avenue between New Market Street and Middle Street which has small beds of flowers on the parapets, nice benches and small lights. It is the part of the Avenue with State House on the Eastern side and GPL on the western side.

Ice cream was on my mind and I bought one from Crème Select., the fancy part of the Main Street Qik Serv. The Vat was $68.00.

I thought of the flowers on Main Street and thought if I had a choice the VAT would go towards caring for the flowers

I don’t have a choice though. The budget will pass in the democracy. The slightly reduced VAT will be paid on more items. I know some pensioners who are trying to stock up on medication to avoid the increased costs.

I sat on a bench not far from the entrance to State House. The avenue was quiet. I had choke and rob on my mind I thought that if anything, I could run to State House.

There are stately black rubbish bins, padlocks on them though. So then maybe.. State House would not be a refuge for me if rubbish bins are not safe.

This bit of the Main Street Avenue looks like any other Avenue in any nice town or village around the world where people take pride in their surroundings as they deal with poverty, crime, corrupt government officials and democracies which ignores the minority interests.. It is like a model of the potential for what Guyana could be – laid out nicely, orderly, clean.

I ate the icecream and thought.. imagine if every single part of Guyana had this opportunity to sit and people watch amidst flowers.

And then of course, it was only this part of Main Street, not the rest of it.

The ugly reality is that in Guyana it seems that part of Guyana will be treated favourably and decorated nicely– the part which is close to State House even if the President did not ask for the flowers.

Flowers for the Ministers and relatives were revealed casually when the list of full scholarships were recently revealed in Parliament.

Minister Annette Ferguson said she applied like anyone else. She is not though, anyone else. She is one of the duty bearers of the state, who has to ensure equitable to state resources. She and Minister 

Henry are both privileged by high salaries and benefits which ‘normal citizens’ do not get.

Scholarships are good things. I had heard a few years ago, that there were many scholarships, some partly funded, some fully funded which were often not taken up. The concern was that people did not want to be bound by contracts. I used to tell people that time flies and if you are lucky and get a good placement, you will get good experience.

Many scholarships are advertised in the papers – mostly those offered by foreign governments.

There is nothing wrong if the Government has a scheme to reward top CAPE and CSEC students. There used to be a Guyana Scholarship award and that used to be a big deal, until it the Government had to restrict the areas of study and the countries because money was a problem. Unless , foreign Governments paid for the scholarships.

Studying in the UK and the USA and Canada is expensive. I remember back in the day when the socialist countries provided partial scholarships so that the Government paid tuition.

When relatives of Ministers also get scholarships to study in the UK, questions must be asked.

What about the other qualifying people and how many are available from the Government for people who want to study in the UK?

I was horrified I saw how many people felt that asking questions was not proper and that the Ministers and relatives deserve the scholarships ‘like anyone else’.. when there is no open transparent process for anyone else to apply for them.

In the whole scholarship fiasco, there have been no revelations about whether the Government would be paying for new scholarships. There was no disclosure by the Minister of Education or any other Minister about opportunities in the budget available to sons and daughters of other Guyanese who are not Minister.

Maybe the DPI will be working on beautiful images with the information about how to get fully funded scholarships from the Government.

Maybe the disclosures will come later.

I know a few persons who returned from their scholarships and found themselves placed at agencies never to do anything which they learned. I know a few qualified people who did not want the contract, or another contract.

It seems former Chief Education Officer Olato Sam is benefiting from a scholarship. Is he coming back to be Chief Education Office when he is finished? Was his part time study part of the reason for the last fiasco before his contract was not renewed?

So many things in Guyana which should be fair and ordinary seem to be messed up. A letter from the cast of Miriamy to the Director of the National Drama Festival is being circulated. The cast is asking for transparency in the NDF, especially in the judging.

The flowers are beautiful on Main Street Avenue. The seat of the bench is flat, not too comfortable like the curved ones with missing wooden slats on Camp Street. If there were more flowers around the place, it would be easy to not bother with who getting scholarships and who not getting scholarships.

But the flowers seem to be on one part of Main Street only.

A beautiful city is the work of the Mayor and Town Council.

It would be easy to ignore the Mayoral elections if the drainage worked, and the city was clean and there were lots of flowers around.

The Mayoral elections were frightening this week.

I thought it would be nice if Sherod Duncan had a stint as Mayor even though I have been very overwhelmed by his beautiful selfies which are of the high quality produced by the DPI.

He withdrew his candidacy one hour before the elections. His message was frightening.

He claimed that there was Ministerial interference in the process.

The Stabroek News report of the elections would have been entertaining were it not for the frightening implications that while the Cummingsburg Accord is working at Central Government , at local Government level, the young AFC candidate was knocked out for thinking that he would be sharing leadership with the PNC.

Mark Jacobs who witnessed the elections described it as ‘obscene beyond words‘.

The PNC Councillors were “whipped” into the party line and it seems a few had disparaging comments about Mr Duncan.

Or maybe they were jealous that they could not make the same kind of beautiful seflies that he makes.

It seems that the AFC will be second fiddle to the PNC in the local Government. Regardless of how the Cummingsburg Accord deals with sharing at the level of central Government, the reality on the ground is very different.

The second frightening thing was Mr Duncan’s affirmation of his support for the Coalition Government even though he believed there was Ministerial interference which resulted in him withdrawing from the race.

It seems that the supporters of the coalition Government are being encouraged to tolerate and accept and defend more and more nonsense. It is frightening to see how people, especially young people, posting as ‘independent’ are defending the indefensible and supporting the madness even as they are losing in the process.

The ice cream is a luxury with VAT which I should enjoy less in 2017. The manufacturers might change the price so I might enjoy less of it any ways.

As long as I have to come close to State House just to sit and enjoy a nice civilised avenue , and that some people think that is okay and justifiable for beauty to be only in certain places, then I remain afraid for Guyana.  If the Government fails, Guyana fails and ice cream and flowers would not be enough to recover from that failure.