Dear Editor,
The persistence of race as the predominant factor in the Guyanese political process, and the role which the country’s political leadership in the PPP/C is playing in healing the ethnic divide, is bearing bountiful fruit, despite coalition miscreants’ attempts to exacerbate disunity in the nation.
If one reads our history, and if one is au fait with the history of the colonisers, one would recognise that the predominant factor driving the power of the colonial elitists in every country they have occupied is a ‘divide and rule’ policy.
Whether they create ethnic cleavages, exacerbate religious intolerance, or cause political divides, it was their strategy to conquer and rule countries that they occupied, primarily for the extraction and appropriation of the wealth of occupied territories. Today Haiti is still under siege by its former colonizers.
Guyana fell prey to this vicious strategy because the viability of the sugar estates under British rule was threatened subsequent to emancipation, when freed African slaves refused to be subservient to the ‘massa’ anymore, and preferred to pursue agricultural activities for survival. When their demands for humane conditions of employment were not met, the British plantocracy was forced to import indentured labourers from various sources, but all except Indians refused to be held hostage to the exploitative plantation owners; hence the pitting of one exploited race against another for pecuniary interests.
When a Commission of Inquiry was established to investigate the treatment of indentured labourers by the plantation owners, it was freed slaves who testified on behalf of the Indian labourers, and forced concessionary measures that created some degree of alleviation in the ill-treatment that was similar to what had been dealt to the slaves by the colonial elitists.
So, at human levels in our country, descendants of African slaves and Indian indentured labourers have always co-existed in harmony. However, when the oppressive governance of the colonials was threatened by the strident calls of Dr Cheddi Jagan and the PPP for independence, they invoked their ‘divide and rule’ policy, and created rifts in Guyana’s first mass-based political party.
We have never recovered from the ensuing rancorous consequences in our nation, which have been exacerbated and exploited by opportunistic politicians whose only agenda is self-enrichment, self-empowerment and self-aggrandizement. However, the leadership of the PPP/PPPC has never wavered in its commitment to creating a united nation, and today Guyanese are well on the way to becoming “One Guyana” because, finally, we – individually and collectively — currently recognize and accept the reality that, instead of consideration of issues, race-based politics will always leave this nation vulnerable to the exploitative strategies of neo-colonizers who covet our wealth, and who are still using ‘divide and rule’ strategies to conquer us and appropriate our wealth through various strategic measures, but mainly by purchasing the favours of key players in the political divide. We will forever be held hostage to the manipulators of our destiny.
The PPP will always be the people’s party, because the welfare of the people is the genesis on which the Party propelled its struggles to win independence and a democratic culture for this nation, and so PPP/C leaders continue to urge all our people to come aboard with us and let us be a united force for real change in the socio-economic dynamics of this country.
Yours sincerely,
Alvin Hamilton
