Ramotar’s presidency plagued by hinterland protests

Aug 17, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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Poor President Donald Ramotar! His nearly three-year tenure of office has been plagued by a wave of angry public protests, particularly in hinterland communities and from the Amerindian people living there. It is a fact that Ramotar inherited the problems from his predecessor, Bharrat Jagdeo. It is also true that, apart from his busy schedule of cutting ribbons, delivering ‘keynote’ speeches, opening exhibitions and attending conferences overseas, he has actually done nothing about hinterland development since entering office in December 2011.
The result of his inaction is that the People’s Progressive Party Civic – PPPC – is now facing a ‘tsunami’ of troubles which grows more threatening by the day. The PPPC administration has become a victim of its own habit of over-centralisation and micro-management.
PPPC politicians continue to delude themselves into thinking that doling out dollops of cash to so-called ‘Community Support Officers’ and handing out billions of dollars worth of solar panels, laptops, all-terrain vehicles and outboard engines will create a mass of grateful villagers who will forget their everyday grouses, grudges and grievances.
Not so. Not after two decades of deception. The PPPC is still to learn the lesson that Abraham Lincoln taught the world over a century and a half ago: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Hinterland residents are not fools.
PPPC administrators, apparatchiks and officials seem to be blindly and blissfully oblivious of the disfavour with which it is viewed by villagers. They seem also to be untroubled by the damage that their policies are causing.
What result did the PPPC expect from deliberately underfunding the physical infrastructure needed for real hinterland development? What result did the PPPC expect from deliberately undermining democratically-elected regional and local councils needed to administer the vast territory? What result did the PPPC expect from handing over millions of hectares of our national patrimony to foreign miners and loggers while disregarding the pleas of the indigenous people for protection from depredation and environmental degradation? No wonder that there is a deafening clamour of anti-PPP protests by angry residents.
In the Barima-Waini Region, for example, there have been public protests throughout the Ramotar presidency. Parents of pupils of the Port Kaituma Primary School were forced to demonstrate against the deplorable conditions of the school’s toilets and environs which, they said, posed a threat to their children’s health. Residents, fed up with the state of a roadway being built to link Oronoque and Port Kaituma, held protests last October; holding placards, they chanted: “We need [a] road!” On other occasions, in Mabaruma – the regional administrative centre – residents continued to protest against the unstable electricity supply; Mabaruma has been without adequate or reliable electricity for several years.
The Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region has also been the plagued by protests. Scores of indigenous people from this Region protested outside the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs last August to mark ‘International Day of World’s Indigenous Peoples.’ They called for a revision of the 2006 Amerindian Act and for their rights to be respected. Their concerns were related to the pressure from external mining and logging interests on the people’s traditional lands; the presence of these extractive industries often had negative social impacts on the local population. In Bartica – the regional administrative centre – residents protested about losing electricity for several days in July; bus operators also protested about the delay in the reconstruction of the Bartica-Potaro Road.
The Potaro-Siparuni, arguably, is the country’s most inaccessible and least developed region. Several MPs of A Partnership for National Unity revealed, in May this year, that secondary school children were being forced to fetch water to their dormitories after the well broke down. In a more notorious case that was publicized by the independent media, the Ministry of Education had to admit that students from the Kato Primary School had been made to fetch logs to cook their meals. Residents of Mahdia – the regional administrative centre – once again protested against poor roads and services, vowing that they, in turn, would refuse to sell gold to the Guyana Gold Board until action was taken to address the grim state of their community.
The vast Rupununi Region – larger than Costa Rica – is a zone of neglect. Dozens of placard-carrying residents converged outside the Lethem Power Company Inc. (LPCI) compound; they chanted slogans calling for the replacement of the company’s management. Protests resumed this year over the recently instituted hike in electricity tariffs for the community. With the increase in electricity cost, there was concern that the tariff for water supply would also increase.
Regional Democratic Councillors in the Upper Demerara-Berbice Region supported the residents’ call to block the Linden-Kwakwani Road to protest against the deplorable state of the road. The vital roadway has been deteriorating for years without serious long-term repairs.
The People’s Progressive Party Civic – PPPC – for over two decades has demonstrated its unwillingness to improve the quality of life of the Indigenous residents of the hinterland and to develop the physical infrastructure there.
President Donald Ramotar’s troubled tenure of office seems doomed to come crashing to an end without a single memorable developmental achievement. It will be remembered most of all for the spate of angry public protests from the Indigenous people and in the hinterland communities where they live.

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