Enough is enough. The Ethnic Relations Commission must act. Too many persons are getting away with race-baiting in our country. Being coy about such atrocious behaviour is enabling the race-baiting charlatans. The more we remain silent, the more we empower these charlatans and race-baiting hate-mongers. The subject of race-baiting is not too sensitive to talk about. After a group of Guyanese showed up and robbed, looted, injured people, and destroyed innocent poor people’s properties in Mon Repos, the President showed up to assure people of the Government’s presence to help them recover.
A group of PNC-linked, social media hate-mongers took to the social media airwaves and accused the President of ethnic bias, because he showed up at a place where most of the victims were Indo-Guyanese. These race-mongers are being allowed to wage their race-baiting hatred without any pushback. Guyanese citizens, NGOs, political parties, faith-based organisations, all civil society groups need to abandon their policy of silence; it is far past time to act.
A PNC MP not so long ago accused supporters of the PPP of being mentally lazy. The allegations were widely publicised. Just this past week, on a social media show with David Hinds, an attorney linked to the PNC repeated that PPP supporters are mentally lazy. There is a whole group – small but nevertheless active – that repeat this as mantra. There is a sub-narrative to what they say, because they do not disguise that they are referring to Indo-Guyanese. This is race-baiting. The PPP is not an Indo-Guyanese party. It is true that most Indo-Guyanese support the PPP. In fact, most Amerindians also support the PPP, and the PPP enjoys support from all other races. The PPP is the only truly national party in Guyana. However, there is a group of PNC acolytes who swarm social media with the fake characterisation that the PPP is an Indian political party. In describing PPP supporters as mentally lazy, these social media politicians really are deeming Indo-Guyanese mentally lazy.
I am an unapologetic supporter of the PPP and a proud Indo-Guyanese, and I am not mentally lazy. When I stand up to hate-mongers coming from the PNC and other parties, I do so because I support and I work assiduously for ONE GUYANA. I resist the hate-mongers not because I am lazy, but because I find their posturing reprehensible. When these hate-mongers castigate people from Buxton and other Afro-Guyanese villages for purchasing black-pudding from Indo-Guyanese at the Mon Repos Market, it nauseates me. Such overt calls to boycott Indo-Guyanese businesses horrify me, and it is among the many reasons I support the PPP. It is not because I am lazy that I support the PPP, but because I am offended by the overt racism of many who speak on behalf of political parties like the PNC. When these spokespersons from that party speak, I never hear any pushback from the leaders of that party, or any other political party other than the PPP. It is for these reasons I support the PPP; it is not because I am mentally lazy.
This past Saturday, I saw an editorial in one of the newspapers, criticising Government for the way it concluded a partnership with the world-renowned Mount Sinai. I accepted that criticism as the newspaper wanting the Government to optimise its transparency; I have no problem with its criticism. That same newspaper did not similarly find it important to condemn, through its editorial pages, the obnoxious attack on, and the terrorising of, Indo-Guyanese in Mon Repos. It is these things that drive me to support the PPP; it has nothing to do with me being mentally lazy. I absolutely abhor the behaviour of groups like Red Thread and the Guyana Human Rights Association, and many others, and commentators who find every and any kind of reason to condemn the Government and yet they pretend they did not see or know about the attack on poor Guyanese, just because of their ethnicity, or saw the obnoxious attempt to rig the 2020 elections. These things are wrong, and these are the reasons I support the PPP, not because I am mentally lazy.
I support the PPP because it did not close any sugar estate and put more than 7,000 persons out of employment, terminate the contract of more than 2,000 Amerindian young people, arbitrarily terminate Amerindian land titling, raise more than 200 taxes, end the $10,000 cash grant to school children and the One Laptop Per Family programme, end the farmers’ subsidies, raise rental lease rates, etc. APNU/AFC and the PNC did all these things. I cannot support a political party that received secretly a $US18M signing bonus and hid it. APNU/AFC did exactly that, and that is why I cannot support them, and why my support is with the PPP.
When COVID-19 hit Guyana, APNU/AFC closed the country and provided no response by introducing a COVID-19 testing regime or providing cash relief for people. The PPP did, and that is why I find comfort in supporting the PPP.
Those who try to intimidate and try to insult our intelligence because they cannot get us to follow them like blind mice are the ones who are exhibiting mental laziness. Far from it, I am not mentally lazy.
