Dear Editor,
Well it has been quite a year for us here in Guyana. It’s been quite a busy year also for me, especially in these very columns. Though I’ve had my fair share of say and allotted space in the three daily newspapers and the weekly Catholic Standard, I have one more letter for 2007. It’s been over seven years that I’ve been writing to the press on a wide array of issues: politics, religion, health, morality, education, complaints, revelations, etc. I wish to thank my editors: Mr Anand Persaud of the Stabroek News; Mr Adam Harris of the Kaieteur News; Mr Sharief Khan of the Guyana Chronicle and Mr Colin Smith of the Catholic Standard. Best wishes to you and your newspapers, not forgetting your families, at this special time of the year! I have submitted to date some one hundred letters to the press in 2007.
The hundred does not include the numerous letters I sent from persons who come to me with their problems and situations that they wish to be highlighted in these columns. And I wish to make it clear and at the same time inform several persons who’ve been asking me if I receive remuneration from the newspapers, I don’t.
So for the New Year 2008 I wish to declare some ‘New Rules.’ They must be implemented as soon as the New Year begins. Here we go:
New Rule: Choose better fictitious names when writing letters to the editor: names like ‘Pinky Parina’ (VAT lover) and ‘June Jupiter’ scream “I do not exist!” and “I’m a fake writer!” Combining people’s names like Faizal Bedessie Deroop, Mustapha Jaffarally and Christopher A. Carmichael, too, give away the unreal nature of writers.
New Rule: If you gotta ask the question, then ask: Dr Veerasammy Ramayya (I just admire your courage and your concern for Berbicians) says, “But the question is”; but the thing is, there is never a question. Please, doc, if you got to ask the question, then don’t even let the ‘bird- shooters’ and ‘hot kitchens’ stop you. At the same time, give the man an award for openly and bravely airing his concerns for Berbicians on the airwaves. Keep on fighting in 2008 doc.
New Rule: A ban in place for 24-hour-a-day TV greetings: you cannot air Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day greetings all day and all night and move into the next day. Whatever happened to nice Mothers and Fathers’ Day call-in programmes, movies, music, etc? I just want to see the greeting that I paid for, and not have to wait for hundreds of other greetings to be aired before I can see mine. I don’t have all day to sit and watch the TV just to see my two-minute greeting.
New Rule: High school children cannot anchor the news: If I want to watch teenagers make a mockery of themselves on the TV, I will watch MTV or VH1 or some savvy reality show.
New Rule: No more silly acronyms! First there was VAT; now exactly one year later there is TIN. What next? CUP? MUG? VAT was touted as something so positive exactly one year ago, but look at the rave reviews this tax has gotten in the Guyanese society this past year.
New Rule: No Christmas in September! I’ve heard of Christmas in July but not Christmas in September. I saw the very first Christmas advertisement soliciting ads for the season in September here in Berbice. Well why not make Christmas an all-year-round thing? Don’t you think?
New Rule: There must be ‘utility logic’: which means that if I use my appliances less this month or there were frequent power blackouts, then my light bill must reflect a lesser consumption, hence I have to pay less money – not more!!
New Rule: Don’t use ‘Old English’ while reading Death Announcements: persons who ‘voice’ death announcements on TV cannot say, “The Lord Giveth and The Lord Taketh,” in the middle of the announcement, either on TV or radio. That actually happened some months ago on a Berbice television station during a death announcement. Hello? Are we announcing a death here or something else? Please let us know if the preparation and airing of these announcements underwent some sort of evolution or reform over the past years.
New Rule: Catch- phrase or slogans must mean what they say: “Non-stop entertainment?” “Non- stop service?” So what do you make of all the ‘blank screens,’ blackout sequences, and just idling times on the television air? So much for ‘non-stop.’
New Rule: Learn to turn the volume of your television sets down! Are you telling me that years after live TV was invented in Guyana that some people still cannot break the habit of not extending common courtesy to the viewers to turn down the volume of their TV sets? Hit record on the VCR if you want to listen to yourself on TV. We need to get rid of the annoying habits of live TV hosts encouraging viewers to turn down the volumes, not to mention the irritating feedback, which some live TV hosts tolerate to a high extent instead of just taking them off the air.
New Rule: Bring on the columnists: I think Kaieteur News has scored points over the past years by featuring the daily and weekly columnists. They offer varying views on numerous issues affecting the Guyanese society, or do they? One thing they need to do is stop writing to one another or a fellow columnist. Please stick to the issues affecting Guyanese and stop your irrelevant writing, especially replying to a fellow columnist and spending day after day in your column doing so. You are the voice of Guyana; and we depend on you to be such.
New Rule: I will not listen to someone on a roof top telling me about telephone company offers. It’s downright ridiculous not to mention that it sends subliminal messages to people to commit suicide. Similarly, New Rule: I do not need you to interrupt my favourite programmes on TV at the top of every hour from 7pm-10pm with that little box that tells me the time. Hello? Find some other way to tell viewers the time, and not during another programme.
New Rule: If we’re going to have Santa Clauses in every nook and cranny around the country, then they must actually look like Santas! Some weeks ago in New York there were training sessions for hundreds of persons who would’ve been this year’s Santa Claus in that area. An ideal Santa begins with actually looking like the real guy up at the North Pole-not someone in an unrealistic costume that would easily give themselves away to the little ones. Let’s make it real for them. And New Rule: There are no blue Santas! Santa wears red, not blue, so where in Sam hill did the blue and white Santas come from? As we’re on the subject of Santa, New Rule: Santa does not “randomly select 100 kids (10 children from each Administrative Region) who sent him letters to fulfil their Christmas wishes” (newspaper ad). Santa loves all children so I suggest whoever started this promotion not to bring it back next year. What a disappointment it will be for the little ones who wrote Santa but did not get anything. That is a real insensitive thing to allow our children to endure.
New Rule: Let there be silence! Whatever happened to silence and peace and tranquillity in our surroundings these days? Almost every home, especially in the country areas, has a set of amplifiers and huge speaker boxes that create havoc in these areas especially on weekends and holidays. There are times that two and three places are playing these ‘sets’ all at once in a particular area; it makes you think that the whole area is going mad or something. Sometimes you cannot hear your own voice in your own home. The noise nuisances are getting to be more problematic and the authorities seem to be lending a deaf ear, pun intended, to this matter.
Quite a lot has happened this year in Guyana; as they say – another year of mixed blessings. There were the highs: a favourable ruling for Guyana in the border dispute with Suriname, the start of construction of the long-awaited Berbice River Bridge, the overdue commissioning of the Skeldon Factory Modernisation Project, successful hosting of Cricket World Cup 2007 at Providence and the Rio Group Summit here, first successful heart- bypass surgery, etc.
The lows: the still not-yet-constructed tower for the not-yet-arrived Doppler Radar for the Meteorological Office in Timehri, Value Added Tax, rising cost of living and food prices, dozens of persons that were killed on the roadways, rise in crime, the withdrawal of advertisements from the state by the Government Information Agency (GINA) from the Stabroek News, still no private radio stations, numerous fires that gutted several important buildings, and trigger-happy minister of the government who has tarnished the image of the Government of Guyana, etc.
The mixed, which means I don’t really know if they are highs or lows include: the traffic lights in Georgetown and the earth tremor that gave a good rocking to the Guyana coastline the other day.
In some respects there are those things that we, the ordinary Guyanese, are sure that will happen in the New Year: more blackouts, a higher cost of living, more discrimination, more lies and empty promises – and oh yes, the rich will continue on their way ‘upward’ and the poor – you know where.
I trust that 2008 will be a year that we all shall be proud of next year end. A very happy New Year to all!
Yours faithfully
L Suseran
