2/24/2020 50 years of wishing and hoping and leaving – Kaieteur News

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50 years of wishing and hoping and leaving

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Caribbean philosophers like Edouard Glissant, Caribbean literary scholars like V.S. Naipaul painted
the Caribbean as a troubled land. Caribbean post-colonial thinkers consistently polemicise on the
Caribbean being the only region in the entire world where transplantation, migration, settlement and
cultural confusion have radically altered the cultural, sociological and anthropological landscape.
Literary giants, poets and academics from the Caribbean have no quarrel with the label that the
Caribbean is a troubled place. No country in the cultural confusion of the Caribbean stands out more
as a failure than Guyana.
Every European and American scholar that writes on the Caribbean singles out Guyana as the main
aberration on the sea of post-colonial stultification.
Prime Minister of St. Vincent, Ralph Gonsalves, posits that Barbados is the exceptional quality in the
Caribbean. He put Jamaica high up and Trinidad but Guyana is not in the same category.
Of the four big names in the English-speaking Caribbean, we are always last on the list of achievers
trying to break out of the prison, Glissant said colonialism brought. Even on the surface of global
image, we haven’t come near to Barbados, Trinidad and most of all, Jamaica.
Why is this so? It is outside the scope of a newspaper column to undertake an analysis of post- Sports
colonial failure in Guyana. I wish this country would overtake many in the Third World now that we
are an important oil producer that will figure decisively in US foreign policy.
But I will be long dead and gone, and the wishing and hoping and the leaving will go on keeping us
where we have been since the West Indies got Independence – the bottom of the ladder. My mom
was fond of saying, “like how butter melts against the sun.”
Oil money will dry up under the intense tropical sun.
As we go into polling stations to vote in the same week we celebrate 50 years of rejection of the
symbolic rule of the British monarch, it may be the last attempt to keep the journey of optimism alive.
So we come back to the question asked above- “Why is this so,” that is, why 50 republican years of
failure? The complexity of the picture is too enormous to discuss but some factors stand out.
Let us leave out the cultural and psychological deformation that colonialism brought. There just isn’t GFF conducts Coaches Education
space to include a discourse on that. Workshop in Region 1
There is no question Dr. Cheddi Jagan and his party and Forbes Burnham and his party have  Feb 24, 2020
disfigured the philosophical foundations of Guyana’s existence. I believe we are existential creatures The Guyana Football Federation conducted a two-
responsible for our own decisions. day Introductory Coaching training at Port Kaituma
Therefore, we cannot go on blaming the psychological effects of colonialism and the legacies of Community Centre, targeting 11 coaches and
Burnham and Jagan. prospective coaches from the Matarkai sub-
The legacies of the Jewish race point to graphic failure of the colonialism paradigm. Seventy years Region...
ago, the Jews were massacred. No country wanted to accept European Jewish refugees in 1933
when Hitler began to dominate in Europe. Today, the Jewish people are extremely powerful folks in Read More

powerful countries of the world.

How then do you explain in the context of what the Jews achieved the continuation of the effects of Alesha Jackman records
colonialism 55 years after the demise of colonial rule in this land?
victory in international...
 Feb 24, 2020
I do not buy the academic nonsense that sees the psychic damage of colonialism as the reason for
cultural deformations and barren minds in Guyana. Surely after 55 years, what was wrongly
transmitted to humans they have to exorcize and it is not an impossible task.
Take homosexuality. Civilisation as late as 60 years ago, frowned on homosexuality. Civilisation Bent Street win Magnum
evolved to reject people of same gender having sexual relations. Today, more and more countries Mash Cup Futsal...
are legalising homosexual transactions.  Feb 24, 2020
The world overcame the psychological brainwashing of centuries of anti-homosexual sermonising.
Why then can’t Guyanese overcome the stultifying effect on our psychology that came with western
cultural domination?
There have to be other compelling factors that account for 50 years of failure since we became a AAG Carifta trials….
republic. One of these determinants is mediocre, visionless leadership that has plagued this land Charles takes girls...
 Feb 24, 2020
since the founding fathers laid the groundwork for Independence.
Here is where we lag badly behind the Caribbean. The other big three (T&T, Jamaica and Barbados)
have produced better quality in leaders than we have. They have produced leaders who are not

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2/24/2020 50 years of wishing and hoping and leaving – Kaieteur News
angels but phenomena.
NEWS EDITORIAL SPORTS LETTERS FEATURES / COLUMNISTS Changed mentality and
WHAT GUYANA NEEDS TO KNOW
 the
However, difference with Guyana is that they are intensely nationalistic and they put their country youthful team among
 FOLLO

above partisan politics. goals...

We cannot get that right in Guyana because we keep mass-producing mediocre leaders who love  Feb 24, 2020
power and their party mandarins over their country.
Will we come out of the chasm after March 2? I hope we do. It is the last throw of the dice.
Jermine and Family
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the Mash Cup in Linden…
opinions of this newspaper) Keon...
 Feb 24, 2020

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