Ralph Seeram should ask whether it is the PPP that wants to take Guyana back to the sixties

Jul 30, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Ralph Seeram, sitting in his perch in North America, plays a good blame game. His piece titled “Does the opposition want to take Guyana back to the sixties” (KN, July 29, 2012) is the kind of dastardly intellectual revisionism and fraudulence that frightens this country.
When Seeram states he doesn’t want to talk about the sixties, he is refusing to discuss the PPP’s role in the ethnic tension and despair of the sixties. He wants to talk about the nasty PNC racialism but doesn’t want to address the PPP’s dirty Apaan Jhaat politics. He forgets the PPP brought itself down from power by its rank ideological senselessness where diehard communists failed to see the PNC monster they would create by their ideological selfishness and foolishness.
They have also created through this communist party the greatest pack of monstrous thieves and corrupters too. That selfishness by the communist illusionists enraged the real power brokers in Guyana (British and Americans) and they worked overtime to democratically remove the PPP from power. I hear nothing of Cheddi Jagan’s hasty and reckless decision to endorse proportional representation as the system of voting in the 1964 election.
Cheddi Jagan’s communist dreamers felt that somehow a divided country where he won just 42.6% of the vote in 1961 would vote for his communist bilge in 1964. This ideological hauteur came back to haunt Indians who were left in the wilderness for 28 years because of these dreamers and their misguided delusions.
Uncompromising PPP communists led to the PNC dictatorship. Ideological blindness and childishness led to Indian victimization for 28 years. Same goes for the PNC socialist dreamers who ended up with empty power, hollow fancy titles and economic destitution. Cheddi Jagan did not stand a chance against the British and the Americans while playing communist in their backyard.
The PPP played a heavy hand in toppling itself from power in 1964 with its idiotic moves. The PPP played a major role in Burnham’s rise to power. The PPP’s failure to compromise or even pretend to compromise like Burnham did to gain power showed its ideological blindness, political naiveté and horrendous decision-making. Indians paid a price for this incompetence and are doing so today for this ineptitude all over again.
These PPP actions that caused its downfall are no different from the utter stupidity of the PNC in leaving that 1980 constitution monstrosity intact when it knew it was going to lose power and that the PPP would use that constitution to brutalize this country and marginalize Africans. These are the political ignoramuses we have been saddled with since 1950. They have not changed.
The monster of racial trepidation that we cannot control today is not from the PNC and UF only; the PPP had an equal hand in racial tension in this country. The so-called monster of Linden was created by the PPP.
Before three men were shot by forces loyal to the PPP government, there were seemingly calculated and racially charged acts in this country up to that point. Seeram seems to obliterate the following from his mind (1) the PPP accused the PNC of rigging the election when the PPP controlled the election machinery (2) the PPP’s mouthpiece, the Guyana Chronicle, publish a searingly racist editorial which enraged Africans throughout Guyana (3) the PPP bigwigs never apologized to this day for the editorial (4) some PPP barkers sought to defend it as factual (4) the PPP did not have heavily armed forces at a sugar workers’ protest in Albion that started before Linden but it did so for Linden (5) the PPP sent forces from Georgetown to Linden but sent none to Albion (6) the racist editorial specifically referenced Linden (7) shortly after the election, the PPP blamed Indians for voting in a manner that could have caused it to lose power to the PNC (8) a top PPP leader stated before the election that no Africans were qualified for ambassador posts and (9) the PPP failed to listen to Lindeners begging for tariffs to be gradually increased while it imposed this abrupt hike triggering the protest. Linden never demanded freeness of the kind that those humongous salaries paid through OP to shocking incompetents represent. Outright jokers are collecting a sultan’s sum from their friends on taxpayers’ backs. Why didn’t the PPP stop their subsidy? Seeram has to be an absolute fraud if he believes the opposition is to be blamed for inciting peaceful protest. How the hell does one incite peaceful protest? Does Seeram know the violence came in the aftermath of the senseless killings of their own? Did Seeram know that when Lusignaners saw their own slaughtered they violently protested?
Where does Seeram believe opposition politicians should be – in government support areas? Lindeners planned to protest for five days. Senseless killings occurred by PPP-commanded police before the five days were completed. Now, we have protests and blockades lasting longer over those killings. The actions of the police led to this. The PPP either directly commanded the PPP to shoot or the PPP deliberately left the police to do its own thing knowing full well that to do either act could lead to killings which could escalate conflict and racial tensions in Guyana.
Seeram is truly wrong. When it took those steps and actions I have outlined and in particular that nasty editorial and its stunning silence to it, the PPP may have sought to create a monster that it now realizes it cannot control. The monster is not the one some ethnic entrepreneurs expected and wanted. The complete racial explosion of this country some may have wanted did not materialize. Instead, peaceful protest is killing the plans of the race dividers seeking to return their own to the ethnic fear trap.
Taking isolated incidents of a handful of vagrants from a community of tens of thousands to use to depict an entire community is the kind of filthy generalization and gross depiction that the Chronicle editorial masqueraded. Seeram should know better. Should the banditry within government and the corruption and magnificent salaries paid for no or little work be used to generalize an entire ethnic group or community?
Where has Seeram seen the breakdown of law and order in Linden except for the blockades? Again, if he could provide us with evidence of a pattern of sustained lawlessness, we will allow him this point. There is more lawlessness, thievery, looting, robbery, corruption, wrongdoing and skulduggery occurring on a daily basis in the PPP’s government offices by PPP agents than there is in Linden.
Lindeners will have to remove the blockades but Seeram has not called for the Albion sugar strikers to remove their blockade. Some will peacefully protest more than others and if you kill their own, their resolve to protest will harden more than others. Not because some refuse to protest injustice or protest less, it means others must do so.
When you forcefully strike at people, you must comprehend their capacity to strike back in protest. Seeram cannot wave his wand and expect everyone must and will subscribe to the same grief, hurt, pain and sense of outrage over anything. People express their pain differently. The same applies to those who may seek to inflame ethnic tensions in this country for short term political gains; some will suffer more than others while all will suffer and this country becomes a land of suffering.
M. Maxwell

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