Harripaul’s embrace of the AFC boggles the mind

Feb 12, 2011 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
Mr. Malcolm Harripaul has over the years been a very prolific contributor to the political debates which have been facilitated by your paper.
During this time he has provided readers of your letter column with extremely valuable insights of the inner workings of the PPP, with particular emphasis on that party’s approach to issues of governance and its lack of democracy.
His letters are interesting and stimulating and he comes over as a true patriot. I salute him for his efforts to help Guyanese better understand the nature of the ruling party.
Before addressing the main reason for penning this letter I wish to offer an opinion on a recent development on the political landscape here in Guyana.
I have pondered on Mr. Harripaul’s decision to join the Alliance for Change (AFC), without understanding why such a focused, patriotic person will choose to associate with a group of individuals who have abandoned the broad masses of Guyanese to satisfy their narrow political interests.
I believe Harripaul has, unfortunately, failed to see that the AFC and its self serving approach to the political struggle in the country, is counter productive to bringing about the kind of change, which he espouses and is desired by so many.
Herein lies my lack of understanding of Harripaul’s decision to get close to the AFC. In his ongoing discourse with the public, Harripaul’s has demonstrated disgust with the PPP.
This has led to him being perceived as a strong advocate for regime change. That has been the central theme in his letters, which have been published in the local media.
Yet, he has sought refuge with members of an organisation whose leadership decision to proceed alone into the upcoming general elections is seen by a large group of persons in and out of Guyana, as being treacherous and will do nothing, but ensure a PPP victory at the polls.
In other words the AFC’s decision to participate alone in the 2011 elections has been interpreted as the desire of Ramjattan, Holder and company to extend the PPP’s hold on power in spite of what they say or have said publicly.
People strongly believe the leadership of the AFC and its financial backers are hoping that their party, providing it does well at the 2011 elections will, like Mansoor Nadir and his TUF, be able to enter into a post elections governance arrangement with the PPP,
That seems to be at the top of their agenda and, if their antics and voting pattern in the parliament are indicators of where their mind-set is, one is left with no doubt that they have been working assiduously to achieve this goal. They have claimed not to be interested in an alliance with either the PNCR or the PPP.
Ramjattan, Holder and the brigade from Queens and Canada really believe that African Guyanese have not peeped their cards and that they are foolish enough to repeat the mistakes they made in the 2006 elections.
It is for this reason that Harripaul’s embrace of the AFC boggles the mind and raises serious questions about his alleged desire for regime change.
However, his position becomes understandable if he also believes and supports this line.
My primary purpose for writing this letter is to respond to Harripaul‘s letter, published in the Kaieteur News on Wednesday, February 02, 2011, under the caption, “PPP exploits racial fears to enbloc Indo Guyanese votes”.
In his letter, Harripaul hit forcibly, the nail on its head. He gave a very graphic account on how the ruling party manipulates crime, politics, street protests and violence – narco related and otherwise – to exploit fear in the population, particularly among its Indian supporters.
Where I part company with him is in relation to his interpretation of what he called African violence against Indians during the PNCR led street protests and the period of violence, which occurred on the East Coast after the prison escapees had encamped in Buxton.
My disappointment is that Harripaul is too well informed to offer such a myopic view of those developments.
He is aware that the PNCR is on record as condemning racial and other violent acts and it has publicly disassociated itself from violence.
The PNCR has also supported the call for an independent, impartial inquiry into all acts of violence beginning from the 2002 Mashramani jail break, up to and including, the time of the publication of the dossier, which highlights killings of several hundred persons.
Harripaul for reasons best known to himself, chooses to ignore all of these facts. I suspect he has done so only because it suits his nefarious purpose.
It is well known and cannot be disputed that the stumbling blocks against the holding of the inquiry to find out the reasons for those deaths, how they occurred and who may or may not be responsible for them are President Jagdeo, his government and the PPP.
In spite of this, Indian rights’ activists like Harripaul are not prepared to condemn the PPP for its refusal to engage this most important process, which at the least will put to rest speculations on what transpired during that turbulent period in the lives of Guyanese. They ignore the realities while continuing to heap scorn on the traditional enemies – the PNCR and African Guyanese.
In discussing the issue of race related violence and more so, when those discussions confront accusations/suggestions (as they inevitably will) that the violence were and are politically directed it must be addressed in a balanced way. If not, those discussions will only lead to a deepening of the divide which separates the various groups and ultimately, usher in further chaos. When the truth is known it must be told. Whenever Indian and African rights activists fail to do so they are subscribing to the efforts of keeping their respective support base entrapped in “their fear” of each other. I would therefore like to believe that Harripaul is more principled than Jagdeo can ever be and he should not allow himself to be painted with the same brush that is used on Jagdeo.
He is obliged to hold himself to a higher standard than that which Jagdeo has set for himself. That is why if Harripaul has evidence which incriminates the PNCR in criminal actions of any kind he should, unlike Jagdeo, not merely make reference to it, but should make it available to the authorities.
It is well established throughout the world, that street protests often become ugly when the security forces and the rulers resort to violence to stop the protesters. Citizens usually get injured, public and private property are damaged or destroyed and in some cases fatalities occur. Incidents of this kind are nothing new. They are unwelcome and must always be avoided and treated as unacceptable developments whenever they occur. History is replete with instances of this nature. The latest manifestation of this is at present being played out in Egypt.
I submit here that many persons in the society tend to criticise the PNCR and Africans only from the stand point of their inherent prejudices and or hate. These persons deliberately overlook the fact that the majority of street protests involving Africans which were organised by the PNCR, were free of violence and on the occasions when violence took place it was due primarily to the use of excessive force by the police, Beatings, shooting of citizens with pellet guns and tear-gassing of protestors as they went about their business peacefully, characterised the police’s response to these activities.
Another factor which is widely known and ignored by political commentators is the PPP’s use of “dirty tricks” to undermine the spirit and intent of protest actions. This ploy was adopted in an effort to discredit the late Desmond Hoyte and the PNCR in the period of street protests referred to by Harripaul. Critics and detractors of the marches are aware that large sums of money were given to certain African personalities under the control of the ruling party and government to pay African young men to attack Indians during political unrest. These tactics were exposed on the occasions they occurred, but are never factored into the arguments of analysts like Harripaul. Why is this so?
On several previous occasions I had expressed my opinion that African Resistance Fighters had committed acts of violence on both Indians and Africans. I had also argued that many of the violence and killings which the regime attributed to them were deliberate, orchestrated propaganda, designed with the specific intention of criminalizing the resistance in particular and Africans in general.
In spite of his silence on this Harripaul is fully aware that the leaders of the PPP in pursuit of this objective, sponsored the gang led by their criminal party member, the notorious Chowtie (who was also involved in piracy and other criminal activities), who was shot and killed after raiding the chicken farm, robbing and inflicting the most vicious of beatings on members of the Civic component Mr. and Mrs. Jules Chabrol on the East Coast of Demerara. This band of Indian assassins was known to stage incursions in several selected Indian communities spreading mayhem where ever they went.
The regime’s counter insurgency tactics of recruiting and arming African gun-men who were then planted into Buxton and the resistance, was also exposed and continues to be ignored by Harripaul even in the face of the unchallenged evidence that were given in the Roger Khan trial in New York. These agent provocateurs carried out the ruler’s instructions to stage attacks on Indians and were also used to attack Africans in Buxton and other parts of the country. Malcolm Harripaul ought to know that any objective assessment of violence in that period must take into consideration all of these facts and should not ignore the dynamics of the drug trade in Guyana and the extent to which high and low officials of the ruling party and government sat down and identified Guyanese, including Indian Guyanese, to be killed by their assassins.
In his letter Harripaul claimed that “after the PNC lost the 1997 elections it embarked on street protests which degenerated into thuggery against Indo Guyanese on several occasions in 1998 and 1999. Politically inspired kick down the door bandits soon surfaced and in two years hundreds of attacks against Indo Guyanese were carried out that left scores of businessmen dead”. His lack of feelings for Africans was underscored when in spite of the statements by Janet Jagan, Moses Nagamootoo, Clement Rohee, Donald Ramotar, Ralph Ramkarran and Gail Teixeira who told various audiences in New York that, “it was not true that Indians were being brutalized and that the businessmen who were killed were drug lords,” he continued to push the line attributing those deaths to the PNCR and Africans.
I recall that during that same period the Guyana government through the Office of the President convened a meeting of civil society groups and individuals to discuss the crisis. A number of Indian rights activists who were present pushed the line they were carrying in the letter columns of the newspapers that the killings were political and racially directly/motivated. This forced the then Commissioner of Police, Laurie Lewis, who was on the government team to caution that the information available to the police pointed to many of the killings being the result of drug deals gone bad. The Indian Rights activists became outraged at the Commissioner’s revelations and took him to task in the press. They could not deal with the fact that several high and low profile Indian businessmen were involved in the drug trade, and became victims when they violated the behavioural code they were obliged to observe.
So effective was the public campaign of the Indian Rights activists’ against Commissioner Lewis they succeeded in forcing the government to suspend other planned meetings on the crisis.
Finally, I hope that Mr. Malcolm Harripaul will understand my motivation for penning this response to his letter, and that he will not allow my criticism to affect his good work of educating the Guyanese public about the wickedness of the present regime and the ruling party.
Tacuma Ogunseye

---

---