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This is incredible ignorance that must be exposed!

Jul 11, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

My policy on the deceptive statements by the PPP as a party, and its leaders when they act in their individual capacity, is that historians and commentators must expose the egregious deceptions in these words, because they are intended to fool the Guyanese people. There may be honest citizens out there who would want to see and hear the truth and may end up believing the carefully planned out tricks of the PPP leaders. This is why those of us who want to see a future for our country must confront the fictions, schemes, lies and stratagems of the PPP because good people can end up voting for them.
I did a column in which I questioned why Mrs. Jagan waited more than sixty years in her political career to say in 2009, months before she died, that the age of retirement should be upped to 65. She was the President of Guyana and during her tenure, she never even considered the issue. After she resigned the presidency, she was the de facto controller of the PPP and the Government; the retirement age didn’t turn up on her radar screen.
It was only in 2009 after her government had become very unpopular, particularly among public sector workers (read that to mean Afro-Guyanese) that she thought of the idea of the increase in the retirement age. It was opportunism that was truly sickening.
Then there is a statement by Mr. Ralph Ramkarran, spoken two months ago and which received my attention in one of my columns. He told his interviewer that NIS benefits should not stop at age 60 because it is after that point in life people need drugs. This was during an interview to promote his candidacy for the PPP’s presidential nomination. Mr. Ramkarran became part of the executive committee of the PPP in 1974. There has never been a word in print since that time until two months ago in 2010 that points towards that belief of his. It is reasonable to conclude that his NIS thought is part of his campaign.
Mr. Hydar Ally, Secretary of the PPP’s executive committee suddenly appeared from nowhere and found himself inside the letter pages of the Kaieteur News two weeks ago. He wrote that there are some truths that some people in Guyana do not want to accept. He cited three of them; (1) it was the PPP that fought against colonialism, (2) the PPP has deepened democracy since 1992 and (3) the PPP has restored the infrastructure of Guyana. All three truths are fictions; that was the topic of one of my KN pieces. When sugar workers, their children and people in the countryside where the PPP has its support read these orchestrated opportunistic advocacies, they can believe them if there isn’t an alternative interpretation.
Enter Clement Rohee. It is my honest opinion that after Charles Ramson, Mr. Rohee should not be accepted as a leader in government anywhere in the world. And this is based on the things that come out of their mouths. I lived under the PNC, didn’t like that regime and fought against it, but it is my honest belief that the PNC as a party would not have accepted a Charles Ramson and a Clement Rohee in their government.
Not in a long time have I seen such ignorance as demonstrated by Mr. Rohee over an uneducated reply to the outgoing British High Commissioner who reflected on the racial divide in Guyana and how it stultifies our development. In a letter to this newspaper, after some highly nonsensical points, Mr. Rohee highlighted two contentions. One is that it was the British that engineered racial division in its colonies. And the British devastated the colonies’ trade structure through exploitation of their resources.
At the primary school level, I repeat, at the primary school level, Third World students are taught this in school in their history books. After Independence, these former colonies have sought to conquer the world and leave the effects of British colonialism behind. The examples are exhaustive. In the 60s, British Guiana had a GDP and GNP way above Malaysia. Today, Malaysia is one the wealthiest countries in the world despite the British divide and rule policy when Malaysia was a colony. A British Treasury report puts India as one of the super-economies along with Brazil and China (all former colonies) by 2015.
In an election that just went by in Trinidad, there was a massive swing of Afro-Trinidad voters towards an overtly Indian party. Where is the racial hangover from colonialism? Guyana hasn’t moved because of politicians like those in the PPP.

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