Mr. Nadir is performing a cunning political stunt

Jan 06, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
President Jagdeo, the ‘Earth Champion’ is treating Bauxite workers like rubbish
The recent pronouncement by the Minister of Labour, Mr. Nadir on the year-old Bauxite Workers/Rusal dispute in which he harshly criticises Rusal for ‘disrespecting the workers, laws, Government and people of Guyana’ is really quite astonishing. Cynical too, because Mr. Nadir is performing a cunning political stunt.
Since it was the PPP in general and this Labour Minister in particular who have been displaying disregard for the rights of bauxite workers (as compared to the Sugar Workers) as well as for the law for over a year now, one could only conclude that this is just cheap electioneering.
It’s also insulting to the 57 sacked strikers and all fair minded and observant Guyanese too, because Minister Nadir is inviting us all to believe that he, like a conjuror, has now miraculously discovered what he did not know all along, i.e. about Rusal’s disrespect for the ‘laws’ and sacked bauxite workers.
To accuse Rusal after all this time of “gross disrespect and disregard for the Government and laws of Guyana” after all the international campaigns, agitations and complaints by the Bauxite Workers Union begs an obvious question: wasn’t this Minister of Labour and his PPP regime not in charge of the Labour Ministry and responsible for enforcing Guyana’s laws-respectively? Or were they on leave?
A Government which disrespects itself and cynically disregards Guyana’s laws so often should forfeit the right to accuse anyone – even Rusal, of “disregard and disrespect” for this Government and the law.
Incidentally, was Rusal already ensconced in Guyana when the PPP Government’s Chief Law Officer and ex-Catholic school boy has his infamous epiphany? You know the sordid business about ‘I really thought it was me! Being accused of certain illegalities..’?
If so, these Rusals, (and the Jagans interminably called these Capitalist types ‘Rapacious Rascals’), might be forgiven for imagining: Hey! we can certainly do business with this lot!
In mitigation, perhaps after 12 months Mr. Nadir has only just disembarked from the PPP’s time machine which I am unreliably informed is located somewhere in the basement of Freedom House in Robb Street.
His date of embarkation can be pin-pointed with some precision to mid-December 2009. This was when the Minister heard with his own ears in Parliament his Party’s Prime Minister Sam Hind’s attempt to justify Rusal’s sacking of the 57 strikers by blaming the victims for their own predicament.
No doubt the Rusals would have noted and welcomed this timely intervention which was reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s ‘justification’ of the sacking of hundreds of US Air-Traffic Controllers.
Certainly on the 13th June 2010, the PPP time-machine took some dizzying turns due to severe ideological turbulence, no doubt causing Mr. Nadir much space sickness – when this very same Rusal ‘running-dog’ Sam Hinds arose in Georgetown to pay tribute to the slain hero of the Guyanese Working People – Dr. Walter Rodney.
This surely represents one of the lowest examples – forgive me – the Nadir of political opportunism as well as displaying egregious contempt for all that Walter Rodney fought and died for – a racially united and politically conscious Working People.
Perhaps this supposedly Marxist PPP party and its Government really cannot help viewing the Rusal Capitalists through the distorting prism of their current and historic (with Burnham’s PNC) racialism in Guyana. It must be an occupational hazard. Shorn of class analysis, maybe they can only ‘see’ fraternal Russians from ‘Mother Russia’ and the USSR.
While we mustwelcome Comrade Nadir back down to Earth, he needs to assist us with our enquiries as they say in the UK and answer a few questions:
1. Could he kindly identify for us what exactly was the nature of the force which precipitated his sudden somersault and urgent return to the reality of Rusal for bauxite workers?
2. And by any chance, did Comrade Nadir take the Ethnic Relations Commission along with him for the ride in the time-machine?
a. If he did so, did the ERC dis-embarked with him?
b. If so, can bauxite workers now reasonably expect their formal complaints about his Ministry allegedly hands-off ‘handling’ of this dispute to be addressed condignly – fairly, without fear or favour and with similar forthrightness as Comrade Nadir’s comments about Rusal?
c. If not, will the ERC’s Bishop Edghill be allowed to continue blissfully wandering around the Heavens wondering about the special place some irresponsible soul may have led him to imagine could have been secured for him in the here-after?
Last but not least, will someone kindly inform Comrade Nadir that while he was indisposed in the basement at ‘Un-Freedom’ House, that the ‘Earth Champion’ of Guyana has acquired a new moniker – President Jagdeo – Earth Champion ‘of Mandela’.
In some dissident quarters, this is considered rather appropriate and well-deserved because it is alleged that Jagdeo’s ‘elected dictatorship’ treats workers and black businessmen in general – Colin Bobb-Semple a notable and imported exception – like rubbish.
Errol Harry

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