Things I will always remember about 2024

ALL humans remember a particular year for personal reasons or otherwise. It could be more than one year. For me, 1974, 1979, 1989, 2020 have potent memories that will never leave my consciousness. 2024 was no exception. It has gone into history, but I will always remember it for many things in Guyana and outside of Guyana. Let’s begin at home.

Former Alliance For Change (AFC) parliamentarian Trevor Williams revealed something on the Freddie Kissoon Show last year that will never leave my mind. I cannot believe humans can be so flawed. He explained that he was in charge of the D’Urban Park project and the Athletic Centre at Leonora. He related how then Minister of Health Volda Lawrence asked for some help in levelling and grading the community playing field where she lives.
After the project was completed, he asked AFC Minister Cathy Hughes for the minister’s mobile number so he could inform her. Mrs Hughes, according to Williams, told him she cannot disclose the minister’s number. Mr Williams at the time was a high state official and a foundation member of the AFC who sat for over 10 years with Mrs Hughes in all the levers of authority in the AFC.

Here is what I wrote on the matter in my column titled, “The revelation about Cathy Hughes of the AFC” of Friday, August 9, 2024: “I believe class thinking was the reason for Mrs Hughes’s approach to Williams.” I am still at a loss as to what went through Mrs Hughes’ head when she did that. People in politics do not treat their colleagues like that. I ended that August 2024 column with these words: “I honestly believe Mrs Hughes should not be in politics.”
Here is what I learned last year about Guyana and I cannot get this thing out of my head. I was reading an online news source named Indo-Caribbean Diaspora News and one of the editors is a well-known letter-writer in the Guyanese newspapers, Mr Vishu Bisram. The article by Mr Bisram of 12, August,

2024, titled, “Understanding diplomatic immunity as regards Guyanese diplomats” lists Mr bisram at the bottom of it as having six Master degrees and six Phds or doctorates.
In commenting on these massive qualifications of Bisram in a column last year, I noted that no one the past 200 years have been so educated and there is no one in the world at the moment that is so educated. No one in Guyana in 2024 has seen it necessary to inform the nation that a Guyanese is the most qualified human on Planet Earth.

It remains a mystery why Mr Bisram is not in the Guinness Book of Records. It remains a mystery why no one in the entire year of 2024 in this country, has not commented on Mr Bisram, given the fact that he is well known through his letters in the press the past 20 years. But let’s move on to outside of Guyana in 2024.

The tragedy of Gaza and the journalism that accompanied it in 2024 has made that year an unforgettable memory for me. Why it has had such a deep impact on me is because of my studies of philosophy. After slavery, the Holocaust, genocide in Rwanda, how could the world not condemn genocide in Gaza? But the tragedy has many ugly dimensions that devastated the human psyche in 2024.
One dimension is the people who are committing genocide in Gaza were victims of the second worst genocidal violence after slavery – the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Secondly, countries that the entire world thought would rush to condemn the Gaza genocide were in fact supporting Israel and doing so in the most barefaced manner.

Thirdly, journalism in the entire Western countries was made available to the Israeli Government and served the purpose of the Israeli Government. Newspapers that we from the developing world thought were the standard bearers for journalism’s sacred values turned out to the journalism of the worst kind. It was the New York Times (NYT) that first reported that women were raped and babies’ heads were paraded on sticks when Hamas freedom fighters invaded Israel.

The story was given to NYT by a former air force intelligence officer. NYT eagerly ran the story with the first instruction all rookie journalists are given –check your source before printing. NYT’s editor at the time was (and still is) a Jewish man who once operated a store in Israel that sold stationery and with his father is on the board of an organisation that monitors the American media for anti-Jewish bias. 2024 was the year the entire world saw that the countries and media organisations we respected for so long no longer deserve our respect.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.

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