Granger’s green Easter sky

 

Anna Correia

It’s Easter another occasion for a publicity campaign, which the Granger team desperately seized to increase Presi’s dwindling popularity (well, what’s left of it, at least!). And so our President went on a kite distribution spree in Malali and Muritaro, located in Region 10.

One wonders if Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo’s current outreach in the Rupununi is what prompted the President’s destination choice (after all, the PPP did get the majority of Amerindian votes)! But while team Jagdeo distributed multi-coloured reusable kites with fun images printed specifically for children, President Granger opted for kites made in the Peoples National Congress Reform stern military green.

And while team Jagdeo handed out grammar and other textbooks to villages to support education, President Granger distributed “specially designed exercise books” (according to official communication on the President’s social media page). Of course, this meant regular exercise books printed in the said suffocating military green, with APNU propaganda labelling the cover.

The last man to have done something similar was Forbes Burnham, but even the dictator, in all his megalomania, didn’t impose the PNC’s nauseating green on young children. He was simply contented to slap his face on Guyana’s legendary blue-covered exercise books. Perhaps Granger forgot that the colour most associated with indigenous culture is red? But, then again, what does the President care about indigenous culture and indigenous rights?

This Arrow echoes the fear of party paramountcy, expressed by growing sections of Guyanese society; party paramountcy by a PNC-dominated Coalition Government which cares not for national unity, as it is set out to obliterate any democracy whose contesting voices and freedom of expression become its enemies.

But while President Granger often invokes democracy as his ally in a poor attempt to demarcate himself from his idol, the late Burnham, the truth is that he is much less subtle in his demarche as an autocratic leader. This can be observed in his refusal to acknowledge the concerns of the Guyanese people through a long overdue live press conference, as well as his protection of PNC bullies across Guyana. It can be observed in his abhorrence for national dialogue expressed; his refusal to uphold the Coalition Manifesto promises; and his failure to acknowledge the economic crisis which has hit Guyana, resulting in the increasing precariousness of the Guyanese people. The President’s autocratic nature is also translated by his indifference to international best practices, including continuity in governance and UN guidelines.

But perhaps what the President has today that Burnham didn’t have in his dictatorial pursuit is a plethora of pseudo-intellectuals using civil organisations and titles as a front to defend causes that serve no other interests but the PNC’s. This is why men such as Eric Phillips of the now controversial ACDA, and PNC executive Vincent Alexander can now advance unsanctioned the claim that African land reparation claims equate to indigenous land rights. A more incoherent and menacing statement towards Guyana’s First Peoples could not be made, except by the PNC. But when the President of Guyana himself, and in person, opposes the authority of over 200 indigenous Chiefs who comprise the National Toshaos Council (NTC) (a legal body ordained by the Amerindian Act 6 – 2006 ), bypasses the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of indigenous peoples, and imposes a Commission of Inquiry into indigenous land claims, we know that it is because minions like Eric Phillips were willing to do the dirty job and pave this abysmal regression of indigenous land rights.

When Speaker of the House, Dr. Barton Scotland, last week dismissed a motion in Parliament to scrap the said CoI on the basis that it is not an “urgent matter”, indigenous peoples countrywide understood that the highest lieu of democracy no longer acts as a shield from the PNC’s caprices.

But the putrid green that the President distributed in Region 10 cannot compensate for more than a century of progress made in regard to Amerindian land rights, which were acquired through the persistence and self-determination of the free Amerindian peoples of Guyana. And it most certainly cannot buy the silence of Amerindians, for whom land rights are intrinsic to their global and UN-recognised status as indigenous peoples. Nor can it mask the stench of a PNC agenda which hungers for a rewritten Guyanese history.

But thankfully for our multi-ethnic, multi-cultured and diverse country, all of Granger’s kites cannot make the sky green.