By Ryhaan Shah
President David Granger in his address to Parliament on October 14 last referred to the decade-long “Troubles” that threw Guyana into chaos.
“The ‘Troubles’ will be remembered as the darkest hour in our history. It was a time of the uninvestigated assassination of a Minister; of the investigation into the alleged implication of another Minister in the direction of a ‘death squad’; of the alleged implication of yet another Minister in the acquisition of a computer to track the telephone communication and location of adversaries targeted for assassination.
“It was a time of arbitrary arrests; of disappearances and of torture of young men; of the surge in armed robberies, narco-trafficking and gun-running. During that first, deadly decade, there were 1317 murders and 7865 armed robberies,” Granger said.
He was obviously referring to the violence that began with the PNC’s post-1997 elections protest. This is well documented in the GIFT report of the January 12, 1998 “troubles”, to use Granger’s word, in which Indian Guyanese were targeted for assaults, robberies, and rape in Georgetown by the party’s African Guyanese supporters.
The PNC-led attacks never let up. A “slow fyah, mo fyah” campaign was given legs by President Desmond Hoyte when he assured party supporters at Cuffy Square that they had the protection of their “kith and kin” in the armed forces. Hoyte’s speech is on videotape.
PNC supporters also engaged in beating white dolls – to represent President Janet Jagan – as they “wuk obeah pon she”. There is evidence in media reports of these ugly events.
One can well understand Granger wanting to disremember the masterminds and source of the “Troubles” especially since the violence transitioned into the Buxton-centred terrorism that raged for some two years. The escape of five prisoners from the Georgetown Prisons in February 2002 was seized on and expanded the political/racial protests into a “freedom fight” with the “soldiers” even appearing on television embracing their AK-47 rifles.
The homegrown terrorism swept through many of the East Coast villages and beyond and included robberies, assaults, murder, rape, bombings and burnings, and the public stripping of Indian Guyanese women.
Since Granger is so exact with the numbers of 1317 murders and the 7865 armed robberies he must be privy to all the available information. It would be in the national interest for the names of the perpetrators and victims, and the dates and circumstances of these murders and robberies to be published.
Other criminal elements, including drug traffickers, took advantage of the widespread mayhem as cover for their own nefarious acts and the PPP/C Government was under tremendous pressure to restore order. Not many countrywide would fault them for the pushback to stop the violence.
But why, even after this experience, they never moved to reform the disciplined forces into professional bodies, as advised by two commission reports, is a question the PPP/C has to answer. Granger is unlikely to undertake any such reform. And why should he when he can enjoy the security, as Burnham and Hoyte did, of having the armed services at his beck and call to keep his opponents in check.
Last week’s column addressed the PNC’s revisionist history of the Burnham dictatorship. This is how revisionism is done – with evasive and generalised language as was used by Granger in his Parliamentary address. The language is revelatory in itself. Was the violence PPP/C-led, the PNC would never omit that point. And why would a Government unleash terrorism on itself, anyway?
The GIFT and GIHA reports on the January 12, 1998 and the Buxton-centred terrorism, respectively, with their compiled evidence and analyses, will always stand as corrections to every PNC revisionist attempt as will all the videotaped evidence and media reports.
It would appear that the PNC intended to bring down the PPP/C Government by whatever means necessary. Their scorched earth approach to politics in which everyone loses if they cannot win is not dissimilar to what occurred during the PNC’s 28-year dictatorship.
The Granger Government is currently mired in a growing number of scandals and corruptions, including financial wrongdoings. This is feeding a sense of anxiety and insecurity about Guyana’s future, and is impacting negatively on the economy and society at large.
Since Granger has not yet stepped in to stop the growing rot, it does appear that his Government’s primary purpose is to prove the viability of Burnhamist policies – and at any cost. Success would depend on revising not only history but current events.
The real trouble is the palpable fear that the PNC’s revisionism is preparing the way for a repetition of Guyana’s darkest hour.
