Other major negative incidents enjoin racial discrimination narrative under the Jagdeo presidency

Aug 11, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
From my readings in recent days, Emancipation Day 2010 observances and celebrations in Guyana simply helped enhance public interest in the ongoing dialogue about the issue of racial discrimination. And all of this is aside from the President’s lawsuit against Kaieteur News and its daily columnist, Mr. Freddie Kissoon, for an article Mr. Kissoon wrote and which the President said cited his government and, by extension, him of racial discrimination against Blacks.
But it was not until I read a letter by well-known PPPite, Mr. Hydar Ally, “Guyana is not a racially polarized society,” (Kaieteur News, August 8), when it dawned on me that the narrative here is actually an ongoing one with mountain and valley moments, depending on where we are in our journey as a people striving to be one nation with one destiny. Before the PPP took office in 1992, it complained bitterly about racial discrimination practised by the PNC government. After the PPP took office the PNC enjoined the narrative about racial discrimination by its successor.
Personally, I began looking for examples of discrimination and marginalisation, and I have since submitted the names of Indian Guyanese who received unusually special favours from the PPP Government and asked anyone to submit the names of Guyanese of other ethnicities who received equally generous favours. One of the government’s biggest beneficiaries is Dr. Ramsinghi ‘Bobby’ Ramroop, who ‘acquired’ the NGPC and Sanata Complex from the government and who previously recorded net losses in his QAII business holdings from 2000 to 2003.
This government is openly discriminating against and intimidating anyone, including businesses, that openly opposes it. The police force and the army also team up to go after armed and dangerous criminals, but when it comes to criminals corrupting the system of government, the police and army are reined in. Even when the British tried to station their personnel in Guyana as part of security sector reforms, the government said it won’t compromise Guyana’s sovereignty, yet sister CARICOM nation, Trinidad, recently hired a white Canadian as its Police Commissioner without compromising its sovereignty while assuring it would not discriminate in its fight against crime and criminals.
Anyway, while acts of discrimination are serious enough to warrant public discussion leading to corrective action, there are other equally, if not far more, serious incidents that happened during the PPP’s reign that no one in the PPP or the government has seen fit to address. Did Mr. Ally ever address the Roger Khan saga, which saw Mr. Khan smuggle drugs from Guyana to the United States and used proceeds from his illicit gains to finance an extra-judicial killing squad? Did Mr. Ally ever call out the government or police for failing to apprehend Mr. Khan while he was openly doing his thing in Georgetown? Yet Mr. Khan now sits in a New York cell serving a 15-year sentence after the US Government failed to get the Guyana
Government’s cooperation in arresting and helping extradite him to face conspiracy to smuggle cocaine charges.
Did discrimination play a role in why Mr. Khan is not serving time in Guyana, Mr. Ally? Didn’t discrimination play a role in Mr. Khan’s ability to acquire prime real estate from government on which to build housing schemes, Mr. Ally?
Now, if the Khan incident was the only one that exposed the soured relationship between the US and an uncooperative Guyana Government, it might be forgiven. But now we have still emerging information that Guyana played host to a man the US authorities are now saying is the head of Al Qaeda’s global operations, and because the US knew it could not get the cooperation of the Guyana Government to arrest and extradite this man, the US had to go it alone trying to nail Adnan el-Shukrijumah who was living in Guyana some time between 2004 and 2007. To do this, the US was forced to concoct a plot to bait el-Shukrijumah into blowing up the JFK Airport, but wound up ensnaring lesser valuable Guyanese players who were all recently convicted in New York on terror charges.
Here is the irony of all this: despite all the encomiums being showered on the government for its so-called progress, Guyana, under President Bharrat Jagdeo, has emerged as a country known for many negatives, including multiple unsolved murders. But there is no one in the PPP or its government who will address these many negatives in letters or op-ed pieces. These apologists would prefer to touch ‘softball issues’ like the always debatable and unwinnable racial discrimination subject.
If the Guyana Government had an excellent relationship with the US Government and was not so terribly compromised by the weird and whacky peoples it eagerly associated with (and still does), it could have turned over Mr. Khan once the US showed an interest in 2006 in having him extradited. It also could have helped the US nab el-Shukrijumah right in Georgetown rather than allow the Saudi-born man to obtain a Guyanese passport then play coy and allow him to escape, while those who associated with him in Guyana are either dead or conveniently silent.
When one stops and carefully reviews the last 11 years of President Jagdeo’s tenure, one has to readily conclude that racial discrimination did occur, but this pales in comparison to the more serious incidents that occurred on his watch. Not surprisingly, we will not be reading about these other serious incidents from PPP and government apologists and spinners, such as Messrs. Prem Misir or Hydar Ally. By the way, since the party that forms the government always has people who will publicly deny discrimination charges, then there will always be efforts to defend what often is the indefensible, but never to genuinely address the concerns of those complaining.

Emile Mervin

The AFC was formed so as to provide an alternative to the PPP and PNCR

passing too that many of those same voices urging coalition out of one side of their mouth are still telling Afro-Guyanese not to participate in elections out of the other. These forces miscalculated horribly in 2006 where the PPP won the elections by a mere 34,000 votes with over 150,000 registered voters failing to turn up to the ballot!
The AFC was formed precisely so as to provide an alternative to the PPP and PNCR, and thus far it has provided the political space for those of us who identify with neither of the two.  Many of us on the AFC’s Executive happen to believe that a third choice remains relevant and even imperative today.  From a very personal point of view, I have a serious problem with those who say to me that I, an Indian who does not support the PPP, must have no choice other than to support the PNCR or surrender my right to the franchise. I am certain that Afro-Guyanese who choose not to support the PNCR and thus forced to support the PPP would be similarly incensed. Those who stridently advocate coalition with the full knowledge of the potential pitfalls are attempting to box the conscientious voter into a corner to make a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, taking dry land out of the equation!
The AFC is the only major political party that can boast that it has earned every single vote it got at elections.  There is not a single person that went into a polling booth saying that their grandfather and father voted for the AFC and so must they, their sons and daughters.
To put it in its correct perspective, the AFC did not get a single vote from the PNCR or the PPP, but from some 30,000 Guyanese citizens!The AFC is the only political entity in Guyana that does not embrace, nor cower to, maximal leadership and ethnic tyranny. Since we do not vote down racial lines, no AFC leader can be sure that what they ask of the NEC will be automatically acceded to. Nothing occurs among us without deep clarification and counter-argument. Those who voted for the AFC did so because they wanted the PPP and PNCR to become accountable to the people of Guyana. Therefore, it is for these people to decide whether the AFC should continue to be a vehicle for them.
I am not against coalition, however we need to realise that our political troubles are not just a consequence of good and evil men. The fact is that no political party – mine included – is composed of angels.  What happens is that our system of absolute power, as practiced under both the PPP and PNCR, rots fallible men to the core.
I personally believe that the best possible result to the 2011 election is that the AFC wins it.
My second best scenario is that no single party wins an outright majority, and this of course, is only realisable if there is a three-horse race.  It is only the legal power that comes from the ability to swing a parliamentary majority that will allow us to curb the excesses that both the PPP and PNCR have demonstrated that they are capable of.
Gerhard Ramsaroop

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