My best column of the last five years
Kaieteur News – “Until someone has loved an animal, part of a person’s soul remains un-awake.” (Anatole France)
Every columnist and interviewer has their number one piece; the one they consider at its best. My choice was made which was my best effort of the last five years in 2016. It was a moment of piercing and relaxing emotions because of the subject matter.
At that time I was no longer willing to tolerate the APNU + AFC running my country. At that time, I discovered that David Granger as president was unfit to be president and was actually at the top of a pyramid of philological order. It was also time for me to discover that the Guyanese people are unfit to be part of a globalized and civilized society.
Before I come to that, let me return to an event that I have touched many times. I thought that was the particular issue that led me to decide that the post-2015 leak had rotted beyond decay and should be removed from power. The anger in me because of that particular situation in me generated a desire to change the 2015 government of the PNC, AFC and WPA that combined their misery and degeneracy into a deadly cocktail of sick power drunkenness and volcanic immorality.
I will describe it briefly because I have been through it so many times on this page. A day after the 2015 election results, the AFC leadership gathered at their head office to select personalities to fill their slots of Cabinet positions. They called a woman on the phone, who was not an AFC member, not an AFC activist, not an AFC activist, not an AFC office visitor, not an AFC funder, and offered her the Ministry of the Environment. It caused psychic laceration in the AFC’s second-tier leadership, and some one spoke to me with tears in their eyes one day over lunch at Le Excellence’s restaurant on Charlotte Street in Lacytown.
I thought that was the defining moment for me how I saw the leak after 2015 until an incident at Ogle Airport. This is my choice of the column that I would consider a numero merger for the past five years. It was published on Wednesday, December 14, 2016 under the title, “The puppies were killed because Mr Gomes did not keep his promise.”
Hope you can find it on the internet. You should be able to, if not, call me on my mobile at 614-5927 or contact me at my email address [email protected] and I will respond by attaching the original copy to my file. I am not going to discuss the content of that commentary because space would not allow for it. But here’s a brief description.
The Guyana Livestock and Development Authority (GLDA) and the Guyana Finance Authority (GRA) were killing puppies and dogs when they arrived at the airport from the inside with their owners. The GLDA and GRA insisted that the owners must identify which of the 10 Regions the puppies came from or from which country. Failure to provide documentation resulted in the animals being killed by fatal injection.
I will never forget that Saturday night in the Kaieteur News office. A gold miner came in with his two assistants and told us that he had just saved his dog from being executed because GLDA and GRA insisted that unless he brings some evidence that the dog is a Guyanese pet he will be put to death. He immediately chartered a flight inside and brought the puppy’s mother for GLDA and GRA officials to see.
The miner could have afforded it but what happened to the pets whose owners couldn’t afford the flight back indoors? This story was carried in the Kaieteur News on Monday, November 28, 2016. Even after Kaieteur News carried the story, the murders continued. As disgusted with this best of GLDA, GRA and the APNU + AFC government, the state-owned Chronicle covered the story with photographs of the puppies killed.
Strange to know that there was no protest from the nation. People in government were not disturbed, and some of them said that when they wake up in the morning, they listen to some classical music. I guess you can describe someone as “a philistine who listens to classical music.” I think the head of the GRA, Mr Godfrey Statia, is an American citizen and I would know that you can’t dare kill animals in that fashion at any US airport. Ironically, the murders were carried out by veterinary doctors.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)