Are there different strokes for different folks in Guyana?

Oct 28, 2008 Letters

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Dear Editor,
With reference to the letter by Lomarsh Roopnaraine captioned “Berbice Should Secede”, I await with eager anticipation to see how a state that deemed the utterances of Oliver Hinckson criminally seditious will react and respond to this.
Hinckson, based on transcripts of his comments on the day of the alleged crime, simply opined that there was a potential for serious problems, given the dissatisfaction and poverty-stricken conditions that visited the existence of many ex-servicemen.
He offered to risk his life to serve as an intermediary between the state and those whose dissatisfaction might have led them to commit crimes and other atrocities.
Nothing in the transcripts even remotely inferred that poverty or disenchantment with one’s quality of life was justification or excuse for crime and violence. Nonetheless, this 64-year-old ex-army officer, who elicited the hostility of the previous Government, found himself in a like situation with the current regime. Kind of like the press being chastised by both sides for being biased. And we know how they interpret that symbiotic disenchantment with a common element.
Lomarsh Roopnaraine, in calling for the secession of a county that is populated mostly by Guyanese of Indian descent, but in which the bones of many of the ancestors of Africans who were enslaved in plantations across that county rest, offers up the most sophomoric reasons for such secession.
He claims that Berbice is being marginalised to meet the needs of the other counties. In other words, the other counties are welfare recipients surviving on the production of Berbicians.
What about if I extrapolate on that reasoning and suggest that all who live in Guyana today are welfare recipients benefiting from 300-plus years of free labour from enslaved Africans? I mean, is that more far-fetched than Roopnaraine’s assertion?
After all, the foundation for the agricultural and other economic and social infrastructure in Guyana was constructed on the backs of the enslaved in all three counties of Guyana.
Roopnarine argues that the site of all major institutions is located in Demerara. But is this unique to just Guyana? Every nation in this world has a capital, and apart from the highly developed nations, the major institutions in every one of them are generally proximated to the seat of that capital. How can a county from which many of the leaders of the current regime sit in governance justify the claim of being treated like a colony of another, where it has just been reported that major portions of monies budgeted for that area had not been utilised?
Imagine, this claim at a time when construction is taking place on a bridge in this marginalized county, while the one in the allegedly marginalizing county is rapidly deteriorating from lack of attention.
Imagine the county against which not one harsh word is ever uttered by the powers that be claiming to be marginalized in favour of a county in which large population centres are damned, labelled as hoarders of criminals, and experience rank hostility from officials with the power to make decisions crucial to the quality of life they will endure. Boy, it just gets crazier day by day in this, my beloved country.
I will wait with eager curiosity to see how the state will react to Roopnaraine’s statement, quote: “Finally, for now, the secession of Berbice will proceed within the boundaries of law and order as well as the will of Berbicians themselves to become independent.” Regardless of what he said thereafter, from this statement Roopnarine is clearly proposing that “the boundaries of the law” will not limit the movement to secession of the County of Berbice.
His afterthought assertion that, quote: “I do not propose any violence or revolutionary means to achieve the goal of independence,” is inarguably that, an afterthought hastily appended to obscure the obvious intent behind the previous comment. Pundits and letter writers pontificating on behalf of the current regime, including Mrs Janet Jagan, frequently call for the prosecution of letter writers on the other side of the political equation for comments far less charged than this one.
If someone, say, from Buxton or Linden, were to make such a public call for secession, they would be accused of inciting violence, people would be demanding their heads, and there is absolutely no doubt that law enforcement would be investigating them and dogging their every move thereafter.
People should not be deceived by the silly claims being advanced by Roopnaraine for secession of the County of Berbice. His is a double entendre agenda, flowered with a bunch of deceptive roses designed to hide the odious thorns behind his true motivations. The question is: are there equal limits on the freedom of speech in Guyana, or is it a matter of who is saying what? Can a Williams say the same thing a Roopnaraine says within the boundaries and jurisdiction of Guyana, and elicit the same kind of response from officialdom? I guess we will have to wait and see.
Although I find Roopnaraine’s argument nauseatingly deceitful and his intelligence insulting, he has set the stage for a precedence to be established on freedom of speech in Guyana. Personally, I do not believe that what he has said should be prosecutable in any real democracy.
But in a country where segments of its population are subjected to death threats for criticizing the Government, and others are prosecuted for the very same suggestions made by columnists and religious personnel, any evidence of different strokes for different folks needs to be illuminated. The letter columns are the only medium in which such illumination, however limited, can take place.
Robin Williams

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