By Akola Thompson

SHORTLY after attending a Red Thread protest against Minister of Social Protection, Volda Lawrence, last Tuesday, I caught a bus headed to the Stabroek Park. Upon boarding the bus, I heard these were, “Coolie man deh in, black man suffering; black man deh in, black man suffering; we gaffa put in a Chinee man now.”

The occupants in the bus were discussing the Mayor and City Council’s recent decision to remove vendors and minibuses from the Stabroek Market area. This was one of the many conversations I have heard since the removal of the vendors, who are again slowly returning to the spaces from which they were sent away.

I and many other Guyanese who have had the misfortune of walking through the Stabroek Market on any given day see the necessity to move these vendors and the minibuses to another location. However, necessity aside, the council has a responsibility to the people not only to provide a clear, ready plan for them, but to treat them with dignity in the process.

On a related note, I am wondering how much resources have been wasted on removing the bollards that lined the former bus park, in the process leaving holes which need more resources for things to return to the way they once were several months ago.

That being said, I do not want to focus too much on the vendors, as their plight seems to be lessening. Instead, I want to focus on the things which drive public discourse, and how there will always be issues which seem to matter less in the eye of the public than others.

I might be accused of irrelevance, but let’s for a moment consider the public outcry over the displaced vendors versus the alleged child molester who now sits on the City Council, Councillor Winston Harding.
While I have been plagued by morning talk show hosts, university students, bus riders and taxi drivers all offering their opinion on the vendors, that was not the case when Minister Lawrence labelled allegations of child abuse by Harding as a “family matter.”

While I may be discomforted by the fact that the public did not have the same feelings of a right to an opinion in the case of Minister Lawrence and Councillor Harding, the fact is that they may never see the need, because, in Guyana, things such as children’s and women’s rights are not things that are cared about until some unnerving story pops up in the media. It just goes to show how we, as a people, often do not see the need to care about things that do not, in some way, directly affect us.

It is this same mindset which sees Guyana remaining in the mire it is in, as we have trivialized and normalized abuse so much that we hardly ever hold our leaders and those who support them accountable for their indiscretions.

Child rights and issues relating to those rights, I would like to believe, go far and beyond race and class, and very few seem to realize how dangerous their silence on issues such as men’s, women’s and children’s rights and protection can be in the future.

While I do feel for the vendors and the decrease in ‘accustomed’ funds they may have over the next few weeks, I cannot help but feel that the public is too choosy in who should garner its outrage.

Adult vendors have a voice which they have no qualms about sounding, and this is further amplified by society. Meanwhile, victims of abuse, particularly victims of child abuse, continue to be silenced merely because we do not think their plight to be as important or as urgent.

Coalition supporters need to also realise that not every criticism of the current administration is unfounded, and while it has a right to pick and choose the issues it finds important, it should know that often this choice to remain silent fuels more deaths, more rapes and more pain.