Dear Editor,
Something is rotten in this Cooperative Republic of ours. And the stench is greater than what emanates from the Haags Bosch dumpsite.
Most people are infected with it, but they pretend not to in the hope that, with a whiff of fresh air, this repugnant odour will go away.
Even sections of the media refuse to encourage an exchange of views on the problem. It is as if, in contrast with the Midas touch, if they do, the reputation and credibility of their businesses will be irreparably damaged.
The state-owned Chronicle newspaper
publishes racially prejudicial and race baiting fulminations by supporters of the APNU+AFC coalition Administration, and they are allowed to get away with ‘murder.’
What is sad in all this is that, save for social media, there is a silence on the issue that pales in comparison to what obtains at a morgue.
In this regard, the upper hand gained by social media over the print media was again demonstrated just a few weeks ago in Tennessee in the USA, where the iconic film “Gone with the Wind” was cancelled at a Memphis theatre after being deemed ‘insensitive and racist.’
Here, in Guyana, the deceptive language we hear from time to time emanating from the mouth of the President of the Republic, such as: “Time for togetherness,” and “Embrace harmony, shun discrimination,” rings hollow when measured against the racist rhetoric and socially disharmonious views that emerge from forums such as the Cuffy 250 Committee, which held its 5th Annual ‘State of the African-Guyanese Forum’ earlier this month.
At that forum, having had their call for compensation for ‘African Reparation’ rejected by the ruling class in London, the born-again ‘champions’ of ‘landless African-Guyanese’ have now turned their wrath on the Guyana Government, demanding that it step in, replacing the Brits, and provide the resources for ‘African reparation.’
What is ironic about this entire situation is that the petit bourgeois bureaucratic elitist descendants of African slaves who currently hold political power are being called upon by a professional traditionalist and elitist group masquerading as black radicals to provide public money as compensation for slavery in a country that is yet to shed itself of the vestiges of a colonial economy.
And as if to add insult to injury, a president who professes to be president of all Guyana throws his weight behind this small, divisive, racist grouping, and invites them to submit project proposals in the name of reparations for inclusion in the 2018 budget.
Implicit in this decision is a raid on the national coffers solely for the exclusive benefit of a single block of Guyanese in a multi-ethnic society.
Word magic and skin strategy are now embraced and being used openly as a means to obtain public funds in the national budget. This is an ominous sign that can fracture even further an already ethnically fractured society.
Thus Government cannot escape scrutiny nor criticism due to its relationship with groups such as the Cuffy 250 Movement in light of its decision to include in the 2018 estimates of expenditure a budgetary allocation for this group.
In the circumstances, the garbage crisis we seem to be ‘inching towards’ is symptomatic of a wider political and social crisis that is looming on the horizon.
Referring to a similar situation in his country, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Basdeo Panday, declared: “There is a deep racial divide in the country that is going to get worse…”
Panday went on, “I think racism is intensifying; one sees it in the Parliament, one reads about it on Facebook all the time …what is happening is, we are going downhill and we are going downhill very fast. One sees the expression of racism much more prevalent now than it ever was, and I think we have to do something about it.”
Panday concluded, “I think we are going to get into serious trouble. We have seen it happen in Guyana, and I think we are heading in that direction.’ (S/N 5/7/07)
Behind all the noise about SARU and SOCU, constitutional disorder, the absence of a GECOM chairman and corruption, divisive politics nurtured by the bogey man of racism is creeping up on us like a thief in the night.
With every passing day, occurrences that reek of racism are unfolding before our very eyes. Racism manifests itself in the appointment of permanent secretaries, statutory boards and heads of these boards, constitutional bodies, the appointment of heads of CoIs, awarding of scholarships and contracts, as well as access to the state media.
The much anticipated selection of a GECOM Chairman and a new senior management of the Guyana Police Force would come as no surprise were they to reflect consistency with other appointments of a particular racial genre.
Yet, though we live in a multi-ethnic society and we bear witness to these unsavory events on a daily basis, we prefer to turn away out of fear or indifference, hoping the bad taste in our mouths would eventually salivate away.
And the culprit is not the PPP, as some may want us to believe; from the inception it has been the PNC.
Mark my words: this is not about playing the blame game, nor is it about putting the plague on both houses.
Guyana’s racial problematic has its genesis in the split in the racially united national movement in 1955, when Burnham, after failing to take over the united, multi-racial PPP, broke away and formed his own black-dominated PNC.
The political/social conditions for the split in the national movement was nurtured and fomented by British colonialism, aided by the then Kennedy Administration to ensure an outcome satisfactory to their long term political and economic interests.
The political competition between the PPP and the PNC, irrespective of its shape or form, must be seen in the context of colonialism’s manipulative efforts at divide-and-rule. It seems paradoxical, but it is not, that the ABC countries supported the PNC instead of the PPP to get into government in 1964 up to 1992. This same ABC group supported the PPP to get in to government in 1992 up to 2015. Today, there is a widespread belief that the ABC countries helped the APNU+AFC get into government in 2015.
The question is: Is there some kind of cyclic pattern of manipulation being played out by the ABC countries?
A popular view circulating for some time now in and out of Guyana is that, without the support of the ABC countries, neither the PPP nor the PNC can hold power in Guyana.
This fatalistic narrative helps promote the view that it is the ABC countries which are the final arbiters that define and determine which political party must hold political power in Guyana, and for how long.
This narrative rejects the view that it is people themselves, through mass political struggle, who determine who holds political power in Guyana every five years.
The ethnically biased polemic on land, launched by the so-called black radicals who have so far appeared before the CoI on land, closely resemble the weapon used by their colonial masters.
They effectively used the policy of divide-and-rule to keep the racially divided groups captive in ethnic garrisons. The modern-day black radicals resort to racial solidarity and ethnic insecurity to arrive at the same objective.
Using magical language, they present their case for ancestral land as a winning strategy on behalf of a ‘dispossessed black minority’ whom they claim own no land as against the Amerindians and Indo-Guyanese, who are ‘better off’ where ownership of land in Guyana’s is concerned.
The irony here is that while we squabble over who has what and who should get what, the state has handed over 800,000 hectares of pristine forests to just two foreign and local businesses.
By portraying their brethren as ‘landless,’ the fake radicals fan the flames of racial tensions in a country with a history of ethnic conflict. This is bound to open old wounds and point the way to disunity, block alliance racism, and cause exploitation and oppression of one race over others.
It has been widely acknowledged that race and class impact significantly on Guyanese politics; but to place emphasis on the intensity of black oppression and deprivation gives a false ring of authenticity, and is not as candid as it might seem.
The ABC countries must be laughing at Guyanese as we seek to perpetuate their well-known colonial practices, such as divide and rule.
This time it is not the white man, but a small clique of African Guyanese pseudo radicals and intellectuals who, having been well tutored and groomed in the wiles of their former colonial masters, now advocate racially-oriented governance practices.
Those who advocate black capitalism and the Balkanization of Guyana’s land mass along racial lines need to recognise that the answer to their demands does not lie within the strategy and legacy of our former colonial masters, but within a broad, all-encompassing people’s strategy in which the primary force are the African, Indian, Amerindian, Mixed, Chinese and Portuguese working people, led by their respective social and political organizations.
Moreover, we must reject the myth that Guyana’s future is determined jointly by those countries with whom our economic and political interests are linked. Our true economic emancipation will not be achieved through Government’s plan to move from the British-controlled sugar industry to an American-controlled petroleum industry. This is tantamount to jumping from the frying pan into the fire.
African Guyanese’ demands in respect to overcoming exclusion and inequality must not be separate and distinct from the just demands of all other Guyanese. The plight of the sugar workers is a case in point.
The ideology of separatism and going it alone rejects united action by all those who are laden and heavily burdened, and plays into the hands of those who uphold the old colonial policy of divide and rule.
African Guyanese must resolve not to separate themselves from their Indo-Guyanese and Amerindian brothers. They are their brethren by ties of consanguinity, suffering and wrong. Consequently, there must be camaraderie in suffering and fighting with them, rather than pursuing fancied advantages for the season.
Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee
