McDougall Report is an exceptionally good analysis of the social situation in Guyana

Apr 06, 2009 Letters

---

Dear Editor,

The McDougall Report on Promotion and Protection of all Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, including the Right to Development, presents us with an exceptionally good analysis of the social situation in Guyana. It is a report that should be seized upon by a Government interested in racial harmony. It accepts the institutional framework and the premises under which it operates as appropriate for social justice if improvements are made in the functioning of the institutions. That approach favours East Indian dominance (as distinct from East Indian domination) and ought to have been gleefully accepted by President Jagdeo. Instead, Jagdeo has lambasted the report in almost every aspect and has referred to the UN Expert as lacking in experience. His response reveals an in-bred racism. Dr. Jagan, before him, had rejected African UNDP Representatives and had made it clear that he preferred white Representatives. That prejudice is evident in Jagdeo’s rejection of the McDougall analysis.

Jagdeo’s fundamental objection is that the Government’s policies towards Amerindians were ignored in the report even though they are the true minority in Guyana. The Report states quite clearly that Amerindians were regarded as indigenous people and that policies relating to Amerindians were dealt with exclusively in another report. With excessive childishness, the President rejects the separate treatment of Amerindians and crudely asserts that the Government has no policy related to minorities since East Indians can be equally regarded as a minority because they number less than half of the total population. This argument is easily dismissed later in this letter.

The President is worried about the influence of Guyanese living in the U.S.A. whom he regards as political extremists. Ordinarily we would be referred to as the Guyanese Diaspora that remits huge amounts of remittances to impoverished Guyanese and that contributes to the maintenance of social peace. The Diaspora does, however, have the potential to express dissent more strongly than Guyanese at home largely because Guyanese overseas are further removed from bounty killings. Death stalks the land in Guyana and silences dissent. Mr. Sharma, the owner of a TV broadcasting station has been physically brutalised in an effort to silence him. Extra judicial killings in the several hundreds, torture in the disciplined services, bulldozing of farmlands are among the methods used to suppress opposition. The Report highlights these brutalities and is accordingly regarded with disfavour.

Brutalities cannot be easily extended to the Diaspora. The silencing of dissent in Guyana, when combined with the numerical and financial superiority of the Government’s supporters, provides the basis for perpetuating a PPP majority into the foreseeable future. The dynamic of the flow of money, with the skilful and brutal manipulation of political power is enough to overcome the shortfall in the ethnic proportion to win elections forever. It is a delusion to think that some combination of political forces can overcome the fear, which people have and secure an electoral victory over the PPP.

But there is a sense in which Jagdeo is correct in having misgivings about the Diaspora. Africans in the Diaspora are awakening to the need to end the confusion about African culture that Jagdeo smirks about. Led by Dr. Kimani Nehusi, Africans, particularly those in the Diaspora, now realise that the most devastating aspect of enslavement is the loss of African culture. We, Africans, intend to stress this cultural deprivation in our self-determination by focus on who we are, on our identity.

Jagdeo fears this African assertiveness like the plague because it does not end at individual self-determination but extends into collective self-determination. It is in respect of the assertiveness of African collective self-determination that the McDougall report is deficient.

It must be noted that Ms. McDougall had no mandate for considering African collective self-determination. And the Africans whom she met were preoccupied with individual self-determination and did not extend their horizons further. East Indians have, since the early 20th century, embarked on collective self-determination. Mr. Nandalall spelt this out fully at an Indian Arrival Day Celebration when he boasted

about how, “We (note the collective concept) came as indentured labourers and now dominate the commercial and political and professional scene.”

African collective self-determination demands changes to the institutional framework that Ms. McDougall found satisfying. Collective self-determination demands an equivalent space for Africans in commerce in Regent Street, in Water Street, in Lombard Street, in Bourda Market, in Stabroek Market, in Sussex Street Market. Collective self-determination demands an equivalent space for Africans in fishing co-operatives, in pharmaceutical manufacture, in stock feed manufacture, in rice cultivation, in rice milling, in the construction industry (where the large contracts are awarded), in the legal profession, in the medical profession and in academia.

It is presented here as a zero-sum approach. It should not be zero-sum. It should be positive sum. To achieve positive sum, the economy has to be expanded substantially. This expansion of the economy for positive sum outcomes is what amounts to a minority policy. For Jagdeo to state that the Government has no minority policy demonstrates a blank mind and a bankrupt development policy. The statement ignores the reality that equal opportunity for Africans requires an investment policy and a training policy that pays special attention to the reduction of inequalities between East Indians and Africans and, between East Indians and East Indians, by rapid expansion of the economy.

It is for this reason that Jagdeo considers us in the Diaspora to be wild extremists. We upgrade the debate to the level of greater equity in the economy. This is a level that Jagdeo seems unable to appreciate. But if he hopes to work in an international institution in a manner as Ms. McDougall, it would be necessary for him to be less superficial. Ms. McDougall is a deep thinker. She did not embrace our collective self-determination concept because her institutions have not thought in those terms. At the level that she was mandated to report, she did an excellent job.

Are we going to take advantage of this report? The PNCR and the AFC should get together and set out their own comments, thanking Ms. McDougall for her work and putting forward her recommendations for consideration at the Hemispheric Summit to be held in Trinidad later this month. Time is of the essence. Jagdeo will attend the Summit. He will not dare criticise Ms. McDougall if the Opposition champions her.

Clarence F. Ellis

---

---