Dear Editor,
I was asked by you to respond to the letter above by Mr Eusi Kwayana. The objected-to phrase “coolie rice government” was in a section of my article that noted: “He (Burnham) coalesced his PPP(Burnham) with the League of Coloured People’s political vehicle, the United Democratic Party (UDP), along with Sydney King (later Eusi Kwayana), who was to dub the subsequent PPP government as a “Coolie-rice government”. Burnham had been chastised by the Coloured elite when he was in the PPP with Jagan as “betraying his own” for “coolies”, as per Ashton Chase in his book “Guyana, A Nation in Transit: Burnham’s Role”.
First, I want to point out that in addition to indicating words actually spoken by someone, quotation marks are often used with terms used in an unusual way, or other expressions that vary from standard usage. The term “coolie rice government” was colloquially used to describe the PPP in the run-up to the 1961 elections and after by the PNC, in which Mr Kwayana was an integral part.
Mr Kwayana says he did not use the colloquial description of the PPP before the 1961 elections, and I accept his word.
However, in a letter to the press, “The PPP should apologise for its lead role in dividing the Guyanese society” (KN June 20, 2009), Mr Clarence Ellis described the above categorisation of the PPP in more standard language: “Matters (inter-ethnic tensions) escalated in the 1957 Government when Jagan decided to put emphasis on the cultivation of rice (for export to Cuba) at the expense of the African economy that was based on fruits and ground provisions”.
Mr Ellis went on to cite Mr Kwayana’s assessment of the then PPP govt: “In “Next Witness” (1962), Kwayana stated that: “First, the Government (i.e. the Jagan Government), the guilty party in the matter of racial conflict, wished to hide the truth because it wants immediate Independence under a constitution which will leave it free to strangle the breath of the African people and the minorities, to create here an East Indian state, to plant the East Indies in the West Indies.”
While Mr Kwayana has apologised for conflating Indian Guyanese with their PPP “leaders” during the 1960s, he has never signalled any change in his opinion of the PPP.
Sincerely,
Ravi Dev
