FOR A NEW GUYANA

Mar 27, 2011 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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The Alliance for Change has noted with concern a very disturbing letter in the Kaieteur News entitled “People are hungry….” by an Osafo Modibo published on the 20th March 2011.
It is simply dishonest and almost immoral to even insinuate that the AFC has utilized insular ethnic considerations in the execution of its robust activism initiative.
Before the protest activity at the Fort Wellington RDC office in support of aggrieved farmers and residents who were inundated by the thoughtless and deliberate release of estate water, the AFC picketed the office of the President expressing our disapproval of the arbitrary sacking and targeting of an African Guyanese woman who had supposedly breached the clandestine code of that office.
This was followed by our picketing of the Parliament with regard to the administration’s sloth and apathy in the face of Rusal’s abuse of primarily African Guyanese bauxite workers.
As a minor by relevant diversion, the AFC has noted with profound trepidation the concerns and apprehensions raised by Mr. Carlton Sinclair in his letter “The bauxite story is a reminder that walking among us they are still abusers of authority” published also on the 20th of March.
The AFC had also noted Mr. Lincoln Lewis’s letter entitled “Injustices in 1969 under the foreign owned Reynolds have come full circle” published in KN on the 11th of April, 2010.
This protest activity outside of the Parliament also highlighted the inundation of Linden with the Government’s propaganda as a result of the non-implementation of Justice Chang’s ruling as well as the palpable absence of equitable Broadcasting and Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation.
At the Linden Launch of the Party’s Action Plan, the AFC’s Presidential Candidate Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan enunciated the AFC’s vision for the revitalization of Linden and by extension the Region 10 economy.
At page 14 of the AFC Action Plan, there is a comprehensive seven-point prognosis which includes tangible initiatives such as the intensification of our block making capability using lateritic bauxite soil; re engaging the Brazilian Government and commencing the Linden to Lethem road and developing Linden to become the main entry point for the eco- tourism expansion.
By the time this column is published, there would have been another peaceful protest activity in Linden articulating the AFC’s deprecation of the underdevelopment that has taken place there.
This programme of activism is premised on the party’s conviction that people of all ethnicities are suffering under a misguided, oppressive and incompetent government and that there is an urgent need for a viable political alternative.
The alternative of the AFC is founded upon the philosophy of multiculturalism wherein the invaluable contributions of all ethnic groups to the evolution and development of Guyanese society are duly recognized and celebrated and wherein there is equality, non-discrimination and justice enshrined in a sacrosanct constitution.
The instrument of the ethnic impact audit or statement is a tangible mechanism that is crafted and honed to deliver such equality and justice.
With regard to that mis- and malinformed assertion that the AFC is somehow unresponsive to the needs of African Guyanese (see the letters by Modibo, Lurlene Nestor et al); the party submits that such contentions can only be based on a blinding ignorance of the philosophy and orientation of the AFC.
The AFC not just acknowledges but is founded upon the liberating struggle of the people of African descent and its central role in the shaping and development of Caribbean societies.
Dr. Mellissa Ifill, in her History this Week piece entitled “Creating and Solidifying African ethnic identity in Guyana”, examined the anatomy of this liberating spirit out of which the state and nation of Guyana is founded.
The celebrated Guyanese scholar Mohammed Shahabuddeen had made the point that Guyanese nationalism, albeit in an embryonic form, was born in 1823 with the Demerara slave revolt of that year.
The societal impoverishment of African Guyanese as well as that of all Guyanese is a product of a historic process of underdevelopment maintained by two regimes of PNC and PPP rulership.
Thus, when the World Bank pronounced on the endemic poverty of Guyana, it declared: “Roughly two thirds of the poor, or 29 percent of the total population, can be further classified as being extremely poor, with an expenditure level below that required to purchase a minimum low-cost diet.
The majority of Guyana’s poor live in rural areas, while extreme poverty is concentrated in the interior regions.”
“The rural poor are self-employed in agriculture or work as agricultural laborers. Poor rural households have access to adequate land resources, indicating that low productivity is a major cause of poverty. Along the coastal areas, poor households are involved in subsistence agriculture and small-scale rice production.
In the interior, subsistence farming is most prevalent. In urban areas, the poor include those employed as wage laborers in a variety of occupations, in small informal businesses, as public servants at the bottom end of the salary scale, and pensioners.”
The AFC is convinced that its economic programme and vision for Guyana is sufficiently capable of lifting an impoverished and demoralized population out of this debilitating quagmire of underdevelopment and abject poverty.
The AFC has recognized that the most important facet of any economic programme deals with its capitalization as part of a comprehensive industrial policy. The PPP regime has proven beyond a shadow of doubt that it knows very little of this aspect of economic growth.
This is why our growth rates for the first decade of the 21st century can be described at best as paltry.
The AFC thus believes that such generation of economic growth will create a new Guyana, one in which there is an improved and enriched quality of life for all Guyanese, regardless of class or ethnicity.

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