An inconvenient truth - Freddie Kissoon
There are some expressions of life that we encounter, and they make us wonder about the character of those who want to lead us to the Promised Land. They shock us. They amaze us. But in the end we come to accept that life is a paradox, hard as that is to accept. Guyana’s contemporary history should teach this nation about the mysteries of politics and the paradox that life is.
Our modern history is full of bitter ironies, some of which do have a hilarious side. I remember the story of Courida Park in Ogle.
In the fifties and sixties, this was an enclave for the European colonial officials and the Portuguese commercial class. At the beginning of the seventies, an expatriate Guyanese of African descent who returned with his Nigerian wife to take up an appointment at UG bought land to build a house in Courida Park. The Guyanese wife of the manager of a famous company in Guyana (which still exists and is still famous) carried out a signature campaign to stop this Guyanese scholar from living there. She wanted to retain the image of the place as a white suburb.
Then came nationalization and the state control of foreign trade in Guyana. The husband migrated soon after and this bigoted woman ironically ended up as the lover of a Minister of the government who was of darker complexion than the Guyanese professor she tried to ostracize.
Life does have these ironies and as you research history you encounter oxymoronic facts that are just fascinating. If the Courida Park incident is a reflection of the strange way life can turn out, then how about Peter D’Aguiar’s crusade against communism?
He has gone down in Guyanese history as the person who shaped the anti-communist movement in Guyana. And he was successful at it. It was his party’s (the United Force) powerful electoral strength that led to the fall of the communist-inspired PPP Government in 1964. D’Aguiar kept the Cubans and the Russians out of Guyana.
Then came the conversion of the Forbes Burnham Government to socialism. The Soviet Union and Cuba opened embassies in Guyana. A trenchant contradiction then occurred. The Communist Russians bought the house of Guyana’s enduring anti-communist, Peter D’Aguiar. He lived in a colonial-style mansion at what is referred to as D’Aguiar’s Turn. The Russian Embassy still stands there. And still standing there is this large paradox of life.
Mr. Desmond Hoyte may be the greatest paradox Guyana produced. Let us describe this interesting enigma. Mr. Hoyte was the Minister of Trade and was generally perceived by the inner coterie of PNC socialists to be a person with strong reservations about socialist economics. Mr. Elvin Mc David once told me that Mr. Hoyte was not comfortable with the PNC Government’s close trading relationship with communist countries and that he was generally seen as the pro-Western voice in the Burnham Government.
Mr. Hoyte became President and eschewed an ostentatious lifestyle.
One aspect of his life more fitted the role of a communist – he chose to live in his modest house on North Road and not in State House which formerly was reserved for high colonial officials. Mr. Hoyte was pro-West indeed. And Jagan was pro-communist. You would have anticipated that it would have been Jagan who would have stayed in his own home after he became President because after all, the entire world knew he was communist.
Instead, Jagan moved into the colonial style mansion of State House after he became President. Quite ironic!
It is interesting to note that one of the most status-infused company heads in Guyana, Sir Jock Campbell, who came to run Bookers in the fifties, refused to have his breakfast and lunch at the Georgetown Club, reserved for the cream of colonial society then. Today, the place this rich capitalist boss frowned on is a leisure resort for some communists who have political power.
I know this long-standing communist from political society in Guyana, who a few years back went and bought the latest Mercedes Benz. It cost a fortune. One can say to that – “Believe it or leave it.” I saw this African rights advocate during the aftermath of the 2001 election controversy join Ronald Waddell’s call for African Guyanese to boycott Indian businesses. He is a friend of mine. The same week he bought a car from a La Penitence businessman. The seller was East Indian.
Religion’s core content is quite dissimilar from philosophy but religion has many essential points that coincide with philosophy’s quest to find the meaning of human existence. Religion preaches the absolute devotion to doing good for our fellow human beings.
Yet so many atrocities are perpetrated by religious devotees, including the Archbishop of Rwanda who participated in genocide by giving shelter to hundreds of Tutsi refugees in his church, then inviting the Hutu killers to slaughter them which they did in ungodly fashion.
The Jews suffered genocide in Nazi Germany but look at how Israel is treating another race, the Palestinians, who are accusing them of Nazi-like behaviour. President Reagan, while in a heated confrontation with the sworn enemy of the US, Iran, was selling guns to that country and sending the money to armed insurgents to overthrow another enemy of the US, Nicaragua.
Finally, the US media (including 60 Minutes) discovered that the huge mansion of frenetic environmentalist, Al Gore, was using a hundred times more energy than the house of a man deemed to be hostile to environmental preservation causes, the current president of the USA. Now that is certainly an inconvenient truth.
