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The Mc Lean and Rai issues are relevant to all Guyanese

Feb 18, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
This is the nature of the beast that Guyanese have to contend with in the modern era that is 2013.
The article “After several demands…Former Army Chief Norman Mc Lean sues for G$7.9 million gratuity” by veteran Journalist George Barclay, smacks you in the face and in your conscience.
I personally hold no briefs for retired Major General Mc Lean, for he presided over every arm of the repressive apparatus of the state that incarcerated me personally, on every pretext, so many times during those years, that I have lost count.
However, on migration, I took with me a copy of a photograph of the Albion Police Station, which primarily, over those years, served and was tantamount to being my second home among others, including No 51, Fort Wellington, Vigilance and Brickdam Police Stations.
During one such incarceration, Police Corporal Cort on striping me of my leather belt and shoes at the Albion lockups, was about to call me “Comrade Peters” but he halted and in his next breath blurted out “No, you not a Comrade, you are a Jaganite.”
However, the retired Major General served his masters with distinction, including in his civic life, with his service to sports etc. At the end of his service, he expected to receive, without hindrance, his gratuity entitlements for the period January 1991-January 1993. Beginning with the Forbes Burnham Administration all through to the Bharat Jagdeo Administration, they have all denied the goodly gentlemen his well deserved entitlement.
Astonishingly, this was not the first instance of the stubborn refusal of the Guyana Administration to honour its patriotic duty to pay a sacred commitment to a Public Servant at the highest level.
There is the well established example of the famous Balram Singh Rai, former Minister of Education and later Home Affairs Minister under Governments headed by Cheddi Jagan in 1957-1962. Mr Rai virtually, singlehandedly and courageously saved the then Capital City of Georgetown from the fires, arson and destruction raging around Georgetown, now famously referred to as “Black Friday”. For a full and exhaustive account of this episode in Guyanese history and B.S. Rai, please read Batoram Ramharack’s seminal work, “Against The Grain…Balram Singh Rai and the Politics of Guyana”.
In discussing this letter with a Guyanese Social Scientist here in New York, he questioned my interest about writing of Mc Lean or Rai and suggested that I concentrate on more topical and current issues such as Plastic City and the plight of women, of NICIL, the Marriot Hotel, the Specialty Hospital, the Airport Project, the Berbice River Bridge and its draconian tolls structure against Berbecians, the Amaila Falls Project and all the myriad other burning issues confronting the oppressed Guyanese nation.
I retorted with the argument that the Mc Lean and Rai issues are relevant to all Guyanese because an injustice against any Guyanese is and injustice against me personally, as that is the principle by which I have lived my life and set my life’s examples.
It is more particularly relevant to us in the light of the unrestricted, unlimited, monthly, multi-million dollar, golden hand-shake pensions passed by our Parliament for the Patrice Lamumba schooled, unqualified, not properly trained, self styled “Champion of the Earth” Bharat Jagdeo, more aptly described by AFC MP Edgar Ramayya as the “Champion of Dirt”. It is the ‘Pantheon of Despots’ who will wantonly acquire multiple honoree doctoral degrees to fool themselves of their omnipresence and onmipotence!
And so unfolds the sad and regrettably history and narrative of my beloved country, Guyana!
Lionel Peters

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