Guyana’s bilateral relations void of political rhetoric could achieve same goals set by UNASUR

Dec 05, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Mr. Vishnu Bisram’s letter to the Guyana Chronicle, “Guyana will benefit from UNASUR,” (December 3), in which he opened by saying, “Government detractors and critics question the motive behind the formation of UNASUR”, further, exposes him as a closeted supporter and defender of the corrupt and inept Jagdeo regime.
In Guyana, he has done polls on who is the most popular politician and who might be the next President, but not once has he done a poll on the distressing state of corruption in government involving public finances and resources being allocated to friends and associates of the regime.
He also never did polls or even wrote letters on why Guyanese, especially Indian Guyanese, are either fleeing Guyana or refusing to return to Guyana, in droves even though the PPP has been in power 18 years.
The reason is simple: he does not want to be seen as the self-appointed, self-anointed ‘credible pollster’ who gave the Guyanese people an opportunity to say that by a huge majority the Jagdeo regime is deliberately corrupt and authoritarian.
After all, Mr. Bisram has himself repeatedly stated how he was in the trenches fighting alongside other PPPites for the restoration of democracy in Guyana (i.e. defeat of the PNC at the hands of the PPP) in a free and fair election fight.
It is in his political blood stream, therefore, not to expose the democratically elected PPP regime as now engaging in criminally corrupt and authoritarian practices. In fact, he still likes to remind readers that the PPP was democratically elected: “(Jagdeo) was democratically elected in free and fair elections certified by international observers including President Jimmy Carter,” (GC, Aug. 18, 2010), and that, “Many Guyanese I have spoken with in NY don’t understand why a writer like Kissoon would encourage a party or its leader to pursue violence to bring down a democratically elected government.” (Kaieteur News, May 10, 2010).
The truth is, the PPP defeated the PNC by pandering/relying on the numerical majority of its Indian support base, and it is this whole notion of Mr. Bisram that being democratically elected somehow nullifies the negative impact of corruption, lawlessness and authoritarianism in government that ticks me off greatly. The PPP is finally in power; everything else is inconsequential or infinitesimal.
How can race not be a factor in the thinking of a man who fought for democracy to bring the PPP to power, but will not fight for accountability and transparency now the PPP is in power? If the PNC’s Forbes Burnham or Desmond Hoyte were alive and doing the things President Bharrat Jagdeo is allowing to be done in government, I bet the whole farm that the decibel level of Mr. Bisram vocal ranting would have blown more than a few ear drums.
Way back on December 31, 2003, he wrote a letter to Kaieteur News comparing the late Forbes Burnham to the Idi Amin (Uganda), noting that Amin was allegedly a racist, much like Burnham, who oppressed Indians and that he (Bisram) and others were forced to abandon home and property to flee their homeland under Burnham.
If by oppression he meant Burnham did not allow the majority Indians to vote PPP, then I don’t think oppression is the right word. Try the word denied, because in the end, Indians and Blacks were denied their right to a fair vote as elections was rigged against all. But while Indians were also denied political power, many actually flourished economically in business ventures and in the agriculture sector.
Other comparisons made by Mr. Bisram in that 2003 letter, which I would leave to readers to draw their own comparative conclusions: –
1) Amin was a former cook of a British regiment in Uganda and, according to reports, was considered an imbecile (in a former classification system, this is somebody with a low IQ of between 25 and 50 and a mental age of between three and seven years: Thesaurus dictionary), Burnham, on the other hand was a cunning lawyer.
2) Burnham lived a life of comfort, while the rest of Guyana lived on a starvation diet in much the same way that Amin lived in luxury in Uganda to the neglect of the rest of Uganda.
3) Amin was a homicidal dictator who killed over 300,000, while only a few disappeared under Burnham.
4) Amin died a hated person in much the same way that the entire Guyanese nation breathed a sigh of relief at Burnham’s passing.
Fast forward to SN, November 22, 2010 and strangely enough he found it rather instructive to take information from as far away as Indian to lecture Indian’s PM in a letter on “The Indian PM should use this giant scam to send a message against corruption,” but compared to the Guyana Government’s giant corruption scandal, he will not do the same to President Jagdeo.
Selective comparisons aside, I don’t know what it would take to separate Bisram the pollster from Bisram the politically biased commentator, but he needs to wrap his lopsided mind around the fact that the same way he joined the fight in the trenches to restore democracy in Guyana is the same way he should be fighting to end endemic corruption under the Jagdeo leadership.
Still, what all of this has to do with his ‘bigging up’ of UNASUR as beneficial to Guyana? UNASUR leaders, in their final Georgetown communiqué, specifically mentioned protection of democratically elected governments and protecting human rights in the region as vital, but like them, Mr. Bisram deliberately refuses to acknowledge/address government’s failure on democratic and human rights beyond the ballot box.
In short, Mr. Bisram, the pollster, has a political bias in favour of the corrupt and inept PPP regime, and whether race is factor I will leave for others to judge.
Nevertheless, Guyana does not need UNASUR, a left-wing regional grouping, to initiate or develop economic and or cultural ties among South American nations. Bilateral relations can accomplish the same things without a lot of the UNASUR rhetoric against America and the developed world, and that is why I think UNASUR, a brainchild of outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, is going to be hijacked and become a political tool that will not benefit Guyana.
Emile Mervin

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