Dear Editor,
Reading Henry Jeffrey’s letter “Ethnic Audit and Inclusivity” of 7/7/25 and Christopher Ram’s letter “Norton’s Resurgent APNU and Mohamed’s Challenge for the Presidency” of 7/8/25 leaves one with the impression that these are supercilious treatises in search of political acclaim and racist acquiescence.
Each, apparently bent on cultivating in the minds of Afro-Guyanese, a bigoted adherence to political partisanship that derides moral and ethical neutrality. In treading this path, Henry Jeffrey went further than Christopher Ram with his advocations of Afro-centric racism, incitement of hostilities, and virulent attack on the PPP. Supportive evidence for these assertions finds authenticity in the following content analysis of Jeffrey’s and Ram’s letters.
Henry Jeffrey, in his thirteen-paragraph letter laced with Afro-centric racism, claims that the PPP is an ‘oligarchy’ that has “deliberately suffocated every area of social life over which Africans have had meaningful control” and “severely decapitalised African Guyanese”. And that “… in 2020, the PPP restarted its programme of pauperising Africans and enhancing the financial position of its own supporters.”
To support his claims, Jeffrey failed to provide validating information on the numeric and ethnic composition of individuals constituting the oligarchy, nor did he present any verifiable factual and substantive evidence of the current PPP/C’s government ‘suffocation or severe decapitalisation’ or ‘pauperisation’ of Afro-Guyanese.
Jeffrey did present some data on wages. However, if he considers his analyses of wage and GDP figures as evidence of the PPP’s “suffocation and decapitalisation of Afro-Guyanese”, that would be tantamount to analytical absurdity.
Here is why: Jeffrey presented figures on “money wage” increases for the years 1980 to 1989. During these years the PNC government was in office. And, while he claimed “money wages” increased from $11.55 in 1980 to $35.89 in 1989, Jeffrey omitted that the daily wage increases during this period amounted to an average of $2.43 when annualised over the ten-year period.
Furthermore, if Jeffrey considers his comparison of Guyana’ teachers’ salaries with those of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Portugal, and Lithuania, then it may be a poignant reminder that one must be mindful of comparing non-equivalent groups – in this case, countries – due to problems of internal validity (bias), not to mention the variability in the years of his comparison, for example, Guyana (year unknown), Saudi Arabia (2023), and Lithuania (2024).
Admittedly, Henry Jeffrey is a very intelligent individual. This, however, is not reflected in his incendiary statements that the “… governments must come to understand that they cannot, without serious consequences [my emphasis], illegally use the state to punish sections of the population that do not succumb to their political will.” And that, “The PPP must not, in this 21st century, be allowed to get away with its deliberate efforts to pauperise modern African Guyanese …”
Furthermore, in his promotion of Afrocentric racism, Jeffrey made clear his distaste for Indo-Guyanese.
He spouted, “Indians control the private sector and gain the bulk of government contracts. Therefore, what the Indian community loses by being a part of the public service is more than compensated for by their being dominant in the private sector.”
Could it be that Jeffrey’s own racism obscures the obvious reality that private sector Indo-Guyanese do not share their wealth with members of their communities, though some do occasionally assist needy friends and family members?
This brings me to Christopher Ram.
In the opening paragraphs of his letter, Christopher Ram appears to glamorise his support for Afro-Guyanese racism by hailing Norton’s revival of the PNC as if it is the “Coming of an Afro-Guyanese Messiah”.
Ram claims, without providing any evidence, that Norton has the support of the 217,920 Afro-Guyanese. And, after lavishing Norton with praise for selecting Juretha Fernandes as his “prime ministerial candidate”, Ram proclaims that the ticket “has the capacity to organise, mobilise and galvanise its support base.”
This, he did, while launching an incoherent negative attack on current Prime Minister Mark Philips. Suddenly, in contrast to his lauding of the Norton-Juretha ticket, Ram seems conflicted, for he said, “The ticket made some expansive promises … premised on higher petroleum … [and that] it will need to rely on more than production.”
This is like a backhanded slap to the face after heaping praise on the “Ticket”. Having praised Norton, Ram focused his attack on the PPP/C for its distribution of cash grants, followed by a feeble-minded attempt to discredit Vice President Jagdeo, whom he claims drifted “from being a critic” to being an “enabler” of Exxon.
Turning to Azruddin Mohamed, Ram compared him to Walter Rodney – a preposterous comparison of the world-renowned and respected historian with a politically inexperienced wealthy individual known for his possession of fast expensive cars unsuited for Guyana’s roadways and whose distribution of gift donations makes one wonder if it indicates a distorted behavioural expression of Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.
In toto, Jeffrey’s and Ram’s presentations reek with overt racism and ethnic indifference. Perhaps both individuals may benefit by heeding the consequences of racist clamours from Uganda’s late president Idi Amin, who mercilessly disenfranchised Indians, which resulted in crippling his country’s economy and retarding its development.
Given this reality, one wonders whether Jeffrey and Ram think that Afro-Guyanese stand to achieve greater social and economic success through the disenfranchisement of Indo-Guyanese.
Perhaps both men would gain from pondering the message of Dr Martin Luther King’s sermon on Gandhi in which he said: “[Gandhi] was a man of love [who fell] at the hands of a man of hate”.
Yours sincerely,
Narayan Persaud, PhD
Professor Emeritus
