This is an historic letter. Circulate it now!

Jul 28, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Dr. Rupert Roopnarine published a short letter with an immensely long value in the Sunday edition of the Stabroek News. This is a statement pregnant with historical importance. This is a letter symbolic of our failure, as a nation, we as a people. This is a missive that unmasks the truth of our long journey from slavery to Jagdeo.
This is a correspondence that shows the Guyanese people the danger we live with, the blurred future that awaits us, and the exigent need for every citizen to prevent the disaster that we see each day as the sun rises on this country.
We will come to the unveiling of Guyana in Roopnarine’s letter below. First let us see how the opposition will strategise on Roopnarine’s contribution.
The Alliance For Change (AFC) is on a high. The party has invented a slogan, “From Third Force to First Choice.” I will concede that the tendency these days given the PNC’s implosion is to see the AFC as the major alternative. But questions of the AFC must be asked. How much of a dynamic force has it been?
The AFC remains perhaps the only Caribbean party that has not staged a public protest or a street demonstration. I believe two explanations could be offered. One is that its middle-class nature keeps it away from a kind of physical politics that is seen as more suited for radical mass-based parties, though it should be noted that the AFC is a mass-based organisation.
The other factor has to do with “falling into the traditional PPP trap.”
Many key AFC personnel feel that the PPP is in a no-lose situation whenever there are street protests; even a peaceful picket campaign. They opine that the PPP will instigate agent provocateurs to create mischief among the picketers so as to reinforce the uncontrollable paranoia of a sizeable percentage of East Indian people.
It will invoke thoughts of Black people running wild and destroying Indian property. The recent arrest of Lewis, Witter and Benschop was deliberately planned by the political elites acting in consort with security officials of the state who are happily aligned with them.
The conspiracy is to paint the courageous trio as people who want to create trouble. Then of course we had the burning down of the Health Ministry. ACDA says that some of its personalities are being targeted by the police. The pieces of the puzzle are being neatly fitted together. The final board will look like a map of the East Indian demography, the members of which will be screaming with fear of Black attackers at the gate.
The plausibility of this conceptualisation should not deter the AFC from confronting
elected dictatorship by taking to the streets in protest against some terrible violations of citizens’ rights by the Jagdeo cabal.
If Red Thread and the PNC could have their demonstrations, why not the AFC? We now return to the letter of Rupert Roopnarine and the value it should serve, not only all the opposition parties but stakeholders like the Guyana Human Rights Association, Red Thread, ACDA, the Guyana Council of Churches and the TUC.
Dr. Roopnarine wrote that when he and some of his WPA colleagues were picked up for questioning in the burning down of the Office of the General Secretary of the PNC and the Ministry of National Development in 1979, he was in custody for three days and suffered no physical abuse. They were charged for arson and put on bail.
Juxtapose this with Clement Rohee’s letter in the press last week reminding readers that the PNC has always been a violent party. Dr. Roopnarine’s revelation has deep implications for understanding the nature of our contemporary history. Is the PPP a worse Government than the PNC? The evidence seems to indicate that it is. Torture seems to be an accepted policy of the PPP regime.
The PNC administration never tortured the people it placed before the courts for political crimes.
My suggestion is that the AFC and the PNC should have a country-wide distribution of Dr. Roopnarine’s statement. Go to the post offices, shopping malls, schools, markets and share out this document. Show the people of Guyana dimensions of our history that they need to know about.
Open the eyes of the Guyanese people as to who are really the nasty dictators, who are really the violent politicians. This bad man, Burnham, this devil of a leader that the PPP leaders have painted him, never tortured those charged by his government for serious crimes.
Look who are the real violent leaders! That historic letter has done a great service to this tragic nation.

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