Benschop replies to the Indian Arrival Committee

Feb 07, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Of course I am grateful that the Kaieteur News, at least, published a portion of my initial response to the sop set forth in Priya Mahase’s hubristic rant.
However, I am somewhat chastened over the manner Kaieteur News, in an apparent attempt to maintain the standard of imbalance that benefits the nuevo ethnic and political aristocracy of Guyana, fragmented my letter to a point where sentences were left hanging in mid air.
Priya Mahase and the IAC enjoy a total monopoly of the public media paid for by Guyanese across the board, and use this as a platform from which to launch ad hominem assaults on those the ruling aristocracy do not like. Given that reality, one would hope and expect that at least one of the two privately owned print media news outlets would make a token effort towards achieving some kind of balance in this lopsided society. That cannot be the case when the entirety of Priya Mahases malicious mendacity is allowed preferential publication, while the editor chose to take an axe to my response in defence. Remember, I did not initiate this exchange, Priya Mahase did.
As I sit before my computer typing a response to one of the many agencies and enablers of the oppressive political and social system that is being fostered upon this nation in which the blood sweat and tears of mine and the ancestors of others brought into existence, I cannot help but reflect on the connections that seem to bind everything together.
Today I go before a Guyana Court to answer charges that are traditionally leveled against activists by oppressive regimes in order to silence their voices. Today is also the 4th day in the month set aside in the US to acknowledge the contributions of the group of people, whose true history when publicized, tend to inhibit the self serving and egotistical sense of superiority their oppressors employ as a rationale for their attitudes and conduct.
By some strange function of chance, maybe fate, these inter-related set of circumstances are being brought together in a historical context that vividly illuminates what Guyana has become. A near microcosm of the most intolerant societies in the Southern US states during the 50s and 60s, where Jim Crowe laws and practices created the economic, political and social order of separate and unequal.
As was occurring in that theatre back then, pundits and others affiliated with the regimes in power enjoyed hubristic privileges based on that connection, and used it to give vent to their inner most prejudices and biases. In Guyana today, despite the circumlocutory manner in which these prejudices and biases are being ventilated, they cannot escape detection.
Thus Priya Mahase’s raging and malicious assertion that, “Benschop should be reminded that he was not freed by the court but was pardoned as a result of the magnanimity of the President”, fits smugly into a historical pattern that is quite familiar in the experience of people like me. What it illustrates most dramatically, is kinship with a mental makeup and psyche that is impervious to concepts, principles and requirements in Laws that seek to ensure that there is equality under its administration and execution.
What is demonstrably evident in the perspective of Priya Mahase, is that people like Mark Benschop do not qualify for what is being argue for on behalf of the head of her organisation, or for the Minister of Local Government, after he let loose with shots in the air in a fit of jealous rage, or for the Minister of Health, who, was linked by the testimony of an informer in a US Court to the activities of a self confessed co-conspirator in unlawful extra-judicial violent activities, including the assassination of Ronald Waddell. I would suggest that Priya Mahase direct her reminders to those persons I mentioned, because, in reality, it is the magnanimity of shared political and ethnic links that differentiates between the legal presumptions and due processes my kind can expect from the regime in power and its agents and agencies, and what is automatically bestowed by same on their political and ethnic kin folk.
The number one accused in the treason case against me, admitted to the President that I was not involved in the incident that led to our indictment. He also made public these disclosures. Priya Mahase belong to the nuevo political and ethnic aristocracy in Guyana who, after some eighteen years of being so positioned, have come to the conclusion that theirs is an absolute entitlement to define what should be truth.
And regardless of historical and public fact, they unscrupulously regurgitate the most ludicrous diatribe that probably flow around the table in Freedom House and under bottom houses, in a kind of Cheshire cat euphoric sense of power. Being housed right next to the Office of the President, her organisation is inseparable from the political power structure in place in Guyana.
The arrogant assumptions that have become a norm with respect to the attitudes and behaviours of both entities are symbiotic reflections of the reality that the Government of Guyana as it is currently constructed, as it is currently ideologue, amounts to an ethnocracy. And what can one expect from Priya Mahase given these advantageous circumstances.
If Priya Mahase continues with the absurd myth that the IAC is national representative organisation in Guyana, maybe, just maybe, she might manage to delude and fool a few. But that assertion is nothing more than the Guyanese rendition of the “I have a black friend” syndrome. It is always placed out there as a camouflage to mask visceral antipathy towards the traditional targets or recipients of nurtured stereotyped judgments, opinions and conclusions.
They fool no one, but the effort is automatic. I never petitioned the President of Guyana for a favour. He simply corrected one wrong he had presided over. The atrocious comment that he hoped I had learned a lesson clearly and unambiguously establishes the fact that my prosecution was in reality judicial persecution designed to teach me a lesson, rather than any effort consistent with legal jurisprudence.
I stated from the beginning that mine was a political prosecution. It was designed to silence the voices of those like me who were speaking out on behalf of a particular segment of the Guyana population. It was and is being done, also, in order to provide vicarious satisfaction to the Priya Mahases of our society. It amounts to a sating of their most visceral urges and prejudices.
Theirs is a quest to colonize and control the entire sphere of political, economical and social power and opportunity in Guyana, while at the same time relegating a significant portion of the population to the margins of collective obscurity. Voices like mine, and that of Freddie Kissoon who choose to directly appeal to the moral and ethical conscience of the constituency being used as leverage in this pursuit, will always be anathema to the agenda of these Orwellian aristocrats.
I will continue to raise my voice in protest against this infamy, regardless of the distortions, the convenient myths and truths, as well as the machinations of Priya Mahase and her associates.
Mark Benschop

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