Some authoritarian efforts needed to correct a troubling PPP legacy

Jun 22, 2015 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
M Maxwell’s letter Tuesday June 2, 2015 Stabroek News, constructs sentiments, stating that at this time in our History, a national cadet corps programme is not appropriate. M. Maxwell is of course writing from his perspective, obviously insulated from the other Guyana he may have awareness of, but may not have the confrontation with.  To illustrate why I think the Disciplined experience would be a positive insert to an obvious fallen social value structure, I must take you back to 1996, when, along with a friend whom I trusted in Law Enforcement, David Hall, I had began to document the effects of the rising Drug trade in Guyana.
Through Hall’s assistance, I had made a special case study of a now demolished Lacytown drug yard. But though subsequently demolished, I was not astonished that, under new owners in the very space, the old activities had resurfaced. My efforts then were self financed, not because I’m an altruist but I had read the 1989 nonfiction modern horror classic ‘THE COCAINE WARS’ by Paul Eddy and others, and how Mama Coca dismantled communities and Governments with the savage death toll of open combat.
I had found no funding and hardly any support, because the consequences of the drug trade were considered negligible in comparison to the finances it was capable of generating, and also ‘Fear’ for at the very initial stages, Mama Coca had demonstrated her sinister first nature, with the assassination of policeman Howard Cummings- 1995, reputably murdered with the participation of policemen. This would repeat itself years later with the murder of ASP Murray and a colleague that was scandalously attributed by a deceased Commissioner as a homosexual suicide.
Today; 2015, we have thousands of drug addicts across this country. It has become, as expected, an epidemic, destabilising families and communities in a country of chronic unemployment, and hardly any money for the detoxing care of addicted family members, and with only two such private institutions, and the most successful of the two, outside of State support. Cocaine, marijuana, hallucinogen pills are common, a driving force behind our accelerated crime wave.
Of the past PPP Government, as you are well aware, focused nothing on the well being of the humanity of the nation, but rather cultivated a close knit super loyal talentless ‘Yard fowl’ support vocal group, where dishonesty, corruption, incompetence and public office for private enrichment and murder prevailed unchecked, and now, with the reckoning with the book-keepers in the interest of the nation, they have the audacity of Barabbas to pronounce themselves as witch hunted ‘Honest Thieves’.  They must be unmasked and imprisoned.
How then, do we proceed to erect the mental bastions to cultivate the discipline and self-esteem crucial to stem the tide of almost daily murders, a large number revealed to have been committed by drug affected minds. Mothers beaten by children ‘who want a raise fuh smoke’.
This severe situation cannot be addressed other than by a physical and mental philosophy under the guidance of disciplined tutelage.  Many myths for political malice have been constructed to demonize organizations like the Guyana Youth Corps, the National Service and the Pioneer Corps, a concept that we particularly borrowed from Israel that exists/ed in most of the countries we admire. These organizations have trained thousands of young Guyanese, exposing them to skills and ideas that have broadened their horizons.
I can testify to that. To conclude this chapter I must insert the fact that those organizations were not political centres, yet the PPP demonized them to the point of self imposed ostracizing of its own constituency from participating in its skill training, to keep this country racially divided, to sustain its political existence, at all costs.
Finally, it must be recognized, that for the PPP, Its most effective bargaining tool to justify its right to power has always been the emotional frenzy of racist rabble rousing. I sat in a friend’s office and he played Forbes Burnham’s 1966 inauguration speech on Youtube. Burnham, 49 years ago was talking about the PPP in 2015.
Bharrat Jagdeo was fully aware of what this type of instigation did in the 60’s, of the deaths and mutilations caused, when he attempted to recreate a similar atmosphere in 2015 to hold on to political power over a nation that he had morally and economically devastated. This mythology of racist fear mongering  has to be addressed, and with clinical examination stripped, exposed and legally punished, because its impetus is Evil.
A deceptive cloak adorned as a defence in the event of the public exposure of mundane transgressions, then the cloak of this sinister mythology is invoked, with intent to entrance and insulate its guilty target group. Casting its primitive arcane fictions onto its multitude who are lured by the enchanting music of this and that Snake Charmer, that summons and perpetuates its venom of ‘we against dem’ through its fabricated chants, as a survival mechanism, to the detriment of the collective harmony of all, in the multiethnic and multicultural societies they by choice inhabit, who may be, and most times are, oblivious of how dangerous its venom is.  Discipline of the mind determines answers.
Swami Aksharananda must explain the ‘atrocities’ of the PNC’  as he indicated in his letter, Stabroek News April 28, 2015, and he must define these ‘atrocities’ in the ghastly context that the term is used, and would be interpreted in our current consciousness. He must begin from 1957 to 1992. Likewise, must Ms Ryhaan Shah, Ravi Dev writing as Sultan Mohammed and others whose racist insinuations emerged from the same cauldron Bharat Jagdeo was vigorously stirring at Babu Jaan.
This malevolent mythology of Fear must be unviled, and not allowed to recoil to its pit and spill its venom another day. I can recall Dr. Denis Williams explaining to me while at Baribina in the North West in 1982-3 about the predicament of ‘Odo’ as he called President Burnham, in respect to the rise of The House of Israel. He was contending the bewildering situation of how so many Afro Guyanese were ready to be regimented in a cultic situation, as Black Jews.
Without realizing that it was impossible for a ‘Rabbi’ to be named ‘Washington’, yet there were princes, Queens ect. The sect had a radio programme where Guyanese were delivering themselves with a southern American drawl, and they eventually bought into the politics of the day. The historical realms that David Hill [Rabbi ] had tapped into were based on fact; the ancient Israelites, Hebrews, were black Africans.
But those realms belonged to rare, private study, and had nothing to do with our school system. What Hill did with our people was pure Creative Drama and showman ship.  But dangerous nevertheless.       At present, ‘folly’ is shouting loudest, and there’s a general opinion that public office means ‘hustle’ rather than service and anything from an ‘Upgrade status’ first time- fire arm licence to a driver’s licence can be bought, to the detriment of public safety.
The reconstruction has to begin somewhere, M. Maxwell, and all of us must use the example of our history. Every British Governor that came to this country was a Military officer, [ Most of the public works of barbarian England were built by Roman generals [ many were Africans ] and Roman military engineers.] The very social structure of Georgetown evolved from a French Naval Officer [1782] who pronounced and commenced his pronouncement “ To establish a capital, which would become a business centre; where religion would have a temple, Justice a palace, war its arsenals, commerce its counting-houses and industry its factories, where also the inhabitants might enjoy the advantage of social intercourse.” Unquote: Thus, the beginning of our Georgetown.
Barrington Braithwaite

---

---