Dear Editor,
Reference is made to Tacuma Ogunseye’s retort (Guyana Times, January 17) titled “everything boils down to racism”. I am glad to read that Ogunseye says he “did not crawl back to the PNC”. He is right as many feel it is more like “he ran back to be with the party of his kith and kin”.
It was Ogunseye and David Hinds who penned that they were not pleased with the direction of the PNC-led Government, but that they will not be critical of it. In fact, Hinds penned that it was out of concern that such critiques could provide an opening for the return of Indian PPP that he refused to blast the Coalition. And Ogunseye and Hinds said “The country not going back PPP” (meaning Indians).
The record would show that the PNC-led Coalition violated countless laws and fired Indians, as well as Amerindians at will and neither Hinds nor Ogunseye was critical of the President or the PNC for transgressions against Indians and others. In fact, Hinds supported and praised President Granger for terminating the Jagan Centre lease and sending thugs to break-up the Jagan sign and putting a lock on the gate, even while the Centre’s staff were inside the building. Hinds was unconcerned about due process and the fact that the Chief Justice had issued a stay order against the revocation of the lease, long before the thugs descended on the building.
Ogunseye’s silence on the Jagan Centre matter has been deafening. This is not surprising as he has always been anti-Jagan. He opposed Jagan as the Presidential consensus candidate in 1992. The record would show that Ogunseye has not been critical of the PNC for closing down sugar estates and for breaking promises (during the election campaign) not to close any sugar estate and to guarantee the rice farmers a market for their rice at $9000 a bag. Today, most farmers are bankrupt as they barely get one tenth of the price promised to them.
Ogunseye writes that his and David Hinds’ return to the PNC was an informed decision made by the WPA. It is their democratic right to be PNCites, as it is my right not to be a PPP-ite or a PNC-ite.
Ogunseye also argues that Walter Rodney too would have joined the PNC against the PPP if he were alive. I think not. Rodney was a principled non-racial political figure who would not have teamed up with a racist party unless he was in the driver seat to reform the party. And he would have made sure there was no racial victimisation of Indians and other ethnic groups.
Ogunseye queries why I have not reprimanded Africans who join the PPP. They did not join the PPP to practice racism; and in the PPP, they advocated for their people interests, unlike Indians who refused to articulate Indian interests. Ogunseye and Hinds have not advocated for good governance or spoke out against endemic corruption over the last 18 months. Ogunseye and Hinds had a reputation among people as “non-racial”, but they have shown a different cut since they joined the PNC – silent against acts of racism.
Ogunseye pens that Rodney was for “a united working class/working people”. So the WPA joining the PNC brings about unity! Since when can there be unity with the exclusion of over 50 per cent of the population and most ethnic groups? Since when excluding sugar workers and farmers from the working people brings about a united working class? What kind of logic or conclusion is that?
Ogunseye also writes that Rodney “was opposed to ethnic domination”. But that is what we have been experiencing since May 2015. Isn’t the governance of the PNC-led Coalition ethnic domination of one group over the other five groups?
Ogunseye says that those advocating Rodneyism and critical of him and Hinds are opportunists. No, he has it wrong. Those who betrayed Rodney like Hinds and Ogunseye are the opportunists.
Yours truly,
Vishnu Bisram
