Ramjattan’s race reasoning – reality versus rhetoric

Jan 30, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
AFC presidential candidate, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan’s reassurance to Indian Guyanese there is no reason for them to be fearful of African-Guyanese (Blacks) has instead riled others who view the comment as racially provocative.
First, the Indian Arrival Committee (IAC), said to be closely aligned to the PPP, dispatched a letter to the Ethnic Relations Committee (ERC) stating that, “The IAC sees this as a deliberate attempt to incite and create strife between the two principal ethnic groups of this country which can result in dire consequences in an election year.” (Demerarawaves.com, January 19).
Parenthetically, the President did say the ERC has the powers to disbar political parties on grounds of giving rise to violence at election time (“Diplomatic utterances on elections worry President,” Kaieteur News, January 26), so one has to ask: is the IAC serving as a political tool to achieve a particular objective of having the AFC disbarred from this year’s elections?
Then Ms. Lurlene Nestor, a member of the PNCR, sent a letter to both independent dailies noting Mr. Ramjattan’s comment made African-Guyanese out as bullies or tyrants who apparently unleash some kind of fear on our Indian-Guyanese counterpart. (“Some reported statements by presidential candidates did not reflect the position of the PNCR,” SN, January 25).
What I think is missing in Mr. Ramjattan’s seemingly inconsequential storm-in-a-tea-cup reassuring comment is context.
Yes, it is an election year and it is safe to say the AFC is pretty much in election mode, so his comment can be chalked up to campaign reasoning.
But how is this any different from the President’s visit to Babu John as he launched his 2006 re-election campaign bid before a gathering of PPP supporters?
The PNCR was somehow linked to the disappearance of weapons from the GDF’s Camp Ayanganna bond, and so he warned that if the PNCR got elected, criminal elements won’t have a problem getting their hands on guns.
I don’t recall any ethnic-based group issuing any statement or the ERC being contacted, but the context in which the President uttered his words was seen by many as driving a sense of fear and insecurity into Indian Guyanese, and that their only recourse from the potential danger was to vote PPP and keep the PNCR from being elected to office in 2006.
It was a definite given, therefore, that the President played the race card in 2006, and it even generated flashbacks of the late Janet Jagan on a previous campaign trail as Dr. Ravi Dev’s ROAR appeared to be drawing huge crowds of Indian Guyanese who were worried about Government’s inability to stop the relentless violent attacks on them by criminal elements. At one campaign stop she screamed, “Don’t split the vote! Don’t split the vote!”
Well, given that Guyanese have traditionally voted along ethnic lines – Indians for the PPP and Blacks for the PNCR – she was seen as appealing to Indians not to split their votes between the PPP and ROAR!
So, like the late Mrs. Jagan, it is an indisputable fact that the President played the race card to secure support and votes from his party’s constituency, and, in the process, perpetuated politically-inspired ethnic tensions between Indians and Blacks. The PNCR, on the other hand, did not help ameliorate matters!
When the AFC was launched in 2005, the principal rationale for its birth was to do away with the race-based political system, and since both the PPP and PNCR are race-based, the AFC saw itself as the alternative to both, appealing to all Guyanese on the basis of reason instead of race and substance instead of symbolism.
Though not a perfect party, its ideal of seeing beyond race is by far more appealing than seeing through the prism of race. After five years, it is up to the AFC to build on its ideal vision for the sake of Guyanese wandering in their political wilderness since 1966, with race-based politics being largely to blame for our dilemma as a fragmented and frustrated nation.
And probably recognising the devastating impact race-based politics has had on our nation’s psyche, but especially as was evidenced in the President’s 2006 remarks and criminal attacks by a handful of Blacks on Indians as a political strategy to get at the PPP Government, Mr. Ramjattan went into an Indian community and reassured Indians that Blacks are not necessarily their enemies of whom they should be afraid. It was a teachable moment for all Guyanese to think outside their own race box.
Mr. Ramjattan went on to qualify his reassurance by highlighting the fact that when Indian Guyanese migrate to Caribbean countries, which are heavily populated by Blacks, they easily assimilate with Blacks. Case in point: Barbados, a predominantly Black nation. Most of the over 30,000 Guyanese on this 166 square mile island, (tiny enough to fit in the Essequibo River), are Indians and they get along well with their Bajan hosts for the most part.
So since the problem in Guyana is not at the grassroots level, but at the political level, then the challenge is to identify and eliminate the sources of politically-inspired ethnic insecurities and fears, and though it may not guarantee smooth sailing into infinity, it could still mean a vital first step towards fulfilling our motto.
Decades ago, Guyana stood at the crossroads of her destiny, with the British beginning to get the political message that the descendants of imported Black slaves and Indian indentured servants were coming of age and wanted self-rule in the land of their birth. Two men – Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham – representing the two major races emerged as possible champions of the people’s cause.
They would eventually split politically, carving out ethnic-based constituencies, and thus began our spiraling descent into political and socio-economic despair.
Decades later, history sort of repeated itself when two men representing the two major races – Mr. Ramjattan and Mr. Raphael Trotman –emerged from parties founded by Jagan and Burnham came together to help form a party that decided to appeal to all Guyanese based on a sense of unity instead of a sense of racial insecurity.
Is the Creator of man sending us a message that we’re getting a second chance to do the right thing as a nation?
Mr. Editor, people can say what they want of the AFC, but especially Mr. Ramjattan, Mr. Trotman, but unless we are cognizant of our past and have matured enough to realise the magnitude of this moment that these two men and the AFC have come to represent in our political process, we may well miss our season for much anticipated change from living a nightmare to living our dream.
Can we do it? Yes, we can! But to do it, we may first have to get past two other men also purportedly representing the two major races: Messrs. Bharrat Jagdeo and Robert Corbin.
The problem with them, however, is their abysmal track record, both independently and collectively. We need leaders who can lead us or at least point us to the way of unity and prosperity.
Emile Mervin

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