Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water

Feb 21, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In my last Sunday column, I made reference to an incident at UG in which one of my students told me that her father suggested to her that Guyana will always be a troubled place and that she should think of leaving. I didn’t name the father. But the way I put it, I’m sure it can be ascertained the extremely powerful person I have in mind.
Children and their parents are leaving this place in a mass exodus. The US Embassy says fourteen persons migrate legally each day. The Canadians have something that makes it easier to get into that country than the US – self-sponsorship. Canada is not going to refuse nurses, science graduates or social workers. If you add to the 14 for the United States, those that leave for Canada and the Caribbean legally and throw in the backtrack avenue, there is indeed a mass exodus.
People leave for all kinds of reasons, including the advice that this powerful man gave his daughter. Guyanese feel we are forever going to be an unstable country. We thought after the 2011 election, a future was there, but President Ramotar’s charge of rigging in the November 28, 2011 general elections by the opposition parties, through the use of violence, is bound to generate fear in the Guyanese people. It may make them feel that we are forever doomed as a nation and sooner than later they should leave.
Two dimensions of Mr. Ramotar’s statement contain scary seeds. First, when you accuse the opposition of denying PPP supporters their right to vote, any rational Guyanese knows what the translation means – African supporters of APNU attacked Indian supporters of the PPP.
Mr. Ramotar contextualized it. He located the violence not in Skeldon, not in Enmore, but in the heart of APNU constituencies – South Georgetown. There is the twin edge – violence and race.
Could a Guyanese be blamed for leaving when they heard their President say that the elections were violently rigged by one set of people against another? Mr. Ramotar further accused the opposition of naked pandering to race.
It does not look good. The rhetoric of race and violence is scary language in Guyana.
But what about the truth? When people speak of actual happenings, you cannot stop them, and they should not be stopped. Propaganda is a different matter.
I monitored the elections in south Georgetown on polling day with Dr. Asquith Rose of the Alliance for Change. We had a security detail with us from the AFC in the car. We covered most of south Georgetown, including my birthplace Wortmanville
There were only two incidents we encountered. One was in East La Penitence and the other in Alexander Village. Both involved persons taunting an employee of the Office of the President who was simply mouthing-off, much to the amusement of onlookers.
The night before the close of poll, I monitored the situation in Kitty. I did not see any form of violence. I did not see crowds outside on the streets stopping persons from voting.
Here is a logistical fact to reflect on. In Guyana, in the countryside you can tell who support which party because of traditional racial patterns. So you can tell in Better Hope who is chasing whom. You can tell who is coming over from Plaisance to chase away who from Better Hope from the polling stations.
In Georgetown, because of the ethnic make-up of the city, it is not easy for opposition supporters to detect PPP supporters, because in south Georgetown you have near ethnic homogeneity.
It is possible for some folks in south Georgetown who are PPP sympathizers to be identified by their neighbours, but this cannot happen on a large scale. I know south Georgetown. That is where I grew up. In my school, there were only two Indians in my class.
On Durban Street where I lived, between Hardina and Haley Streets, there were only three Indian families, including the father of Eddie Boyer of National Hardware. It would be interesting to know in south Georgetown, how those opposition supporters were able to detect large groups of PPP embracers and deny them from voting.
As the Stabroek News puts it – if the opposition rigged the 2011 elections, then what prevented them from winning? What about the police force? Why did the ranks allow the violence? What about the international observers? They missed all that action in south Georgetown?
The man who advised his daughter to leave Guyana knows what he is talking about– he knows his party will not allow Guyana to be free.

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