Is Sam Hinds a bridge to racial unity or a PPP doormat?

Oct 23, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
PPP presidential candidate, Mr. Donald Ramotar’s selection Mr. Sam Hinds as his prime ministerial running mate really does not inspire the same sense of change and hope most of us had back in 1990 when the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan picked Mr. Hinds as his running mate in the Civic arm of the party.
Back then, many of us wanted to see the PNC gone so we could say change was possible, and since we were at the bottom of the barrel, there was no other way for us to go but up.
Dr. Jagan also talked big about having a lean and clean government, different from the PNC regime, so after observing the failings of the PNC he could not return to power and repeat those failings.
But then Dr. Jagan died suddenly in 1997 and the PPP morphed from touting working class values and lean and clean government to being silent in the face of endemic government corruption, vindictiveness, lawlessness and dictatorial behaviour.
Mr. Hinds, who came out of a social activist movement, GUARD, originally tried to fit in with his 1990 claim that since Indians made up the majority race in Guyana, and since they traditionally vote PPP, then the PPP would win the pending election and he, being Black, would then become a symbolic bridge for Blacks to the Indian-dominated PPP regime.
After Dr. Jagan died, Mr. Hinds was visibly active and always in the news, and he seemed to be trying very hard to make a difference. Most will agree that he has a healthy work ethic and he is not known to have been associated with any of the government corruption. He seemed a gentleman among gangsters. But then the little man started flexing his muscles and pushed Mr. Hinds off the front page and TV screen. Today, the Civic arm is either broken or amputated.
Still, as I search the corridors of my memory, I really can’t remember anything of substance – such as piloting bills into law or projects into reality for Blacks – that this symbolic bridge did for his Black brethren during the five years Dr. Jagan was President, and especially after the little man started grabbing all the media attention. I think I am on safe grounds when I say Mr. Hinds never lived up to his promise of being a bridge for Blacks.
In the wake of the 2002-2004 crime sprees that had so-called Black Freedom Fighters waging gun attacks against innocent people, the attacks were said to have vicariously targeted government’s discrimination against and marginalization of Blacks.
Government did not respond by asking Mr. Hinds to be a ‘bridge’ to engage in dialogue or even calling on CARICOM for policing intervention! Government responded by allowing an Indian drug lord to use his illicit financial gains to fund an extra-judicial pogrom against criminals, suspects and soft targets of murder-for-hire plots.
And even after the crime sprees ended, Mr. Hinds never publicly urged the government to set up a commission of enquiry, nor has he ever publicly urged the government to keep its promise and have the police investigate Roger Khan. The only bad eggs in Guyana were Black criminals?
And when the army razed the backland farms of Buxtonians and those farmers voiced their ire, the government did not send the ‘bridge’ for Blacks to address that predominantly Black community; it sent an Indian cabinet minister, Mr. Robert Persaud.
One vivid example where the government seemed to have found Mr. Hinds to be very useful to it and not to Blacks had to do with the revelation on tape of a former senior cop,  a Black Guyanese, allegedly making a statement about planting something on someone.
It turned out that the senior cop’s office phone was bugged by aforementioned drug baron, Roger Khan, but instead of the President ordering a probe into how Khan criminally bugged the top cop’s phone, the President ordered Prime Minister Hinds to investigate the senior cop. This is one example of where Mr. Hinds went from being a bridge for Blacks to being a door mat for the PPP.
When it comes to the bauxite industry, an area where Mr. Hinds worked his way up to a senior management position as Director of Research and Engineering, I know for a fact that Mr. Hinds often spoke up and out against the PNC regime’s lack of sensitivity to the plight of workers. Someone said he wanted to become a priest, and that may explain his sense of caring.
Unfortunately, politics has the ability to turn the best of intentions into the worst of realities, and that is why the fiasco with the bauxite industry, which employs mostly Blacks, is an area in which he failed to make a marked difference.
From the disbanding of the industry’s pension plan to the selling and reselling of the bauxite operations at Linden to the threat of use of force against workers at another bauxite operation, it seems as though bauxite workers have never stopped being victims of political spite and uncaring managers.
And the shocking revelation in the President’s libel case against Freddie Kissoon of bauxite money ending up in the sugar industry should make Mr. Hinds be ashamed to visit Linden again.
Though not a bauxite-related issue, PPP supporters on the coastland have access to programmes from both state and private TV stations, but Mr. Hinds, the ‘bridge’ for Blacks, failed to make forceful representation on behalf of Lindeners regarding that predominantly Black community’s desire for TV programmes other than those force-fed by the state’s lone TV station.
In the 2006 elections, there was even controversy over a parliamentary seat allegedly won by the AFC but which went to the PPP on behalf of Mr. Hinds. The reasoning seemed to have been that the PPP could not afford to have Mr. Hinds hail from Linden and lose that seat to the newcomer AFC. But what has Mr. Hinds done for Lindeners?
Then last Sunday, Mr. Ramotar told Lindeners at a PPP campaign rally that he will work to revive the bauxite community and create 2000 jobs. Well, isn’t he 19 years late? I thought this was what the PPP was supposed to have done starting in 1992, and Mr. Hinds was right there as Prime Minister when the PPP failed to do its job in Linden for 19 years. Why should we suddenly believe Mr. Ramotar?
Editor, I can only surmise two reasons why the PPP went with Mr. Hinds again, and they are: 1) The PPP wants to take complete political control of the Linden community, and 2) Mr. Hinds’ ‘squeaky clean’ image may help dilute the effect of the deep stain of corruption that defines the PPP and its government.
But even though Messrs. Ramotar and Hinds may have that good guy, squeaky clean image, the facts are Mr. Hinds’ failure, as outlined here, and Mr. Ramotar’s failure on the GuySuCo management board and in the demoralized PPP prove the PPP promotes and sponsors failure!
Emile Mervin

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