…PNC’s hand
President Granger took on WPA Executive David Hinds, after the latter critiqued some comments of his at an Emancipation Day gathering of African-Guyanese. So your Eyewitness isn’t blamed for misrepresenting these gentlemen in a sensitive area, he’ll quote the two interlocutors quite extensively. First the President: “You must be ashamed if you do not have work. Some people are proud that they don’t have work. They want a raise. They always want a raise. People get a raise today, they expect to come back… to come back to want another raise, but we’ll have to promote self-employment in this village and other villages.
“Go out there and use your talent to enrich yourself and your children. That is economic emancipation. We must go out there and use our talents. If we make our living by hanging around the corner and liming at the Guinness Bar, we will be forever poor but if we go into our farm, go into our workshop, go into our schools we will be able to bring prosperity.
“Let’s put our monies in boats, buses and bicycles, not in vodka, rum and gin. Let’s put the children first. If our fore-parents were drunkards, we won’t be here today, but they saved their money and they bought these villages not for themselves but for future generations.”
Now Hinds conceded this was out of “tough love” but made two objections. Firstly he pointed out the President engaged “self-criticism” with his African Guyanese supporters but, “he (Granger) heads a Government that is most intolerant of internal self-critique. No member of the governing coalition has felt free to criticise the Government in the open on any issue.” But this isn’t fair, is it? In general, coalition members are supposed to criticise each other in private, right? When you take your criticism to the public, you’re exposing your (soft) underbelly to your opponents!!
Secondly, if they’re not given a private hearing, there’s the matter of the elephant in the room to which the WPA’s always tone deaf: the disequilibrium in size between them and the other two major parties. Back in the eighties – possibly at their zenith – they overplayed their hand with the PPP ‘cause they didn’t heed the folk wisdom of “lil bottles and big bottles” needing to be on different shelves. They felt they were a “big bottle”!!
And it looks like they still believe that, vis-à-vis the PNC. Even though the WPA certainly has a kind of moral standing because of Rodney and Kwayana, in ethnic electoral politics, “morals” go only so far in an exercise where fear dominates.
Did Hinds think 1992 was an aberration?
…concrete assistance
Hinds went on to posit, “after rebuking black people, he (Granger) left them with little hope.” More specifically, he changed, “President Granger and the coalition promised them that if we won power, we would help them. Now that we have the power, we seem to be telling the “go help yourselves.” Now this certainly isn’t fair!! Way back in 2016, didn’t the PNC-led Government arrange for a CDB loan/grant of US$10 million (GY$210 million) which they matched with another US$2 million (GY$42 million) for the villages of Ithaca, Buxton, Triumph and Mocha??
Isn’t the vast majority of the 1200 farmers – supporting 35,000 people – in those villages African Guyanese?? What about all those asphalted roads laid in these communities? And there were so many other Government schemes launched? What about the $68 million the Government provided to IDPADA-G to establish the infrastructure for developing the community? Didn’t they organise a meeting with stakeholders to provide business access? Even Hinds told Buxtonians there are loans available – if only the residents would go out with their business plans.
Your Eyewitness really believes David Granger was treated a tad unfairly!
…the PPP
Hinds concluded that the PNC-led Government has to resolve “the structural problems of the black community…(which) a PPP Government would never see that as their principal task.”
And the other communities’ problems come after??
