FREEDOM AT LAST!

Aug 02, 2015 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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In this year 2015, the word Emancipation developed new dimensions for us in Guyana.  Denotatively, Emancipation signifies any of various efforts to procure economic and social rights, political rights and equality for specifically disenfranchised groups.  In the broadest terms, it entails prescribing and practicing the modalities that ensure equal status of individual citizens regardless of religion, political affiliation, property, or other “private” characteristics.
Political freedom (also known as political autonomy or political agency) is a central concept in history and one of the most important features of democratic societies.  Political freedom is also closely connected with the concepts of civil liberties and human rights – economic, social and cultural.
Emancipation in its truest form requires the relationship between the governed and the ‘governor’ to be free from oppression or coercion.  It requires the removal of disabling conditions and the creation of enabling circumstances in the society.  In Guyana those disabling conditions include the lopsided privileges and agreements that had been ‘gifted’ to individuals and business concerns, local and expatriate, whose activities have been inimical to the development of this nation state.
At the expense of repetition, the General and Regional elections of 2015 heralded in a new administration which has been saddled with the onerous task of undoing the self-serving programmes set in train by the previous government which were designed to enrich the functionaries and a few at the expense of the majority of Guyanese people.
Their selfish activities discriminated even against their traditional supporters, activities that denied them jobs, since the party had failed to attract internal and expatriate investments in new, modern industries.  The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) denied every community basic developmental infrastructure, and they denied sugar workers their right to expect that the industry at which they and their ancestors toiled for several generations is modernized and mechanized to assure its longevity.
On a national scale, the PPP denied Guyanese people their right to work and to benefit from the resources of their country, specifically by giving away to their cohorts, friends and relatives, huge chunks of the nation’s airwaves which in any country is worth tens of millions of dollars.
On a criminal scale, the PPP/C while in government unconscionably expended the people’s hard earned tax dollars on questionable ‘projects’, not least among which was the now useless US$32M terrestrial fibre optic cable that was being laid just beneath the unstable, vulnerable (to bad weather) top soils between Lethem and Georgetown.  Reports state that over 40% of the cable was damaged in the laying process by contractors who were eminently unqualified to handle the delicate components associated with information communication technology.  To fix this travesty an estimated US$20M would be required.  This sum does not include the cost of construction and maintenance of the repeater towers/stations along the cable’s route.
The Coalition government is currently examining the project in its current state alongside viable alternatives to deliver internet connectivity to hinterland communities while simultaneously connecting law enforcement stations and outposts, hospitals and health centres, schools and other learning institutions with their respective Ministries.  This is E-governance!
Just prior to the 2015 elections, the incumbent PPP concocted and signed a ‘contract’ with a little-known construction contractor, ostensibly handing over to him, for an initial 25 years, sole ‘ownership’ of the fibre optic cable and the freedom to utilize the facilities as he pleased.  Along with this came duty-free concessions for imported luxury vehicles among other things.  In short, national assets worth billions of US dollars paid for with money from the nation’s purse was callously given away to a party supporter, but we did say ‘ostensibly’.
The Guyanese saying, “There’s more in the mortar than the pestle” applies and questions, suppositions, inferences and ‘guesstimates’ abound.  Recently, the coalition government began investigating new information that has the potential to unearth much of the anti-national machinations behind this travesty.
It calls to mind the infamous story behind the construction of the Marriott-branded hotel which was also funded from the national treasury and built almost entirely with imported Chinese labour, at a time when Guyana was recording high national unemployment rates. The ill-fated Skeldon sugar factory represents yet another exhibit in the PPP’s Hall of Shame.
May 2015 most certainly delivered to Guyanese our Emancipation from political and economic tyranny that would have continued interminably had the majority of our people not stood up and declared “Enough!” We were all fed up of being trampled upon, taken for granted, our rights usurped and ignored, especially the rights of every single citizen, bar none, to safety and security.
For many years the previous government refused to confront and put away criminals who have become more emboldened and behave as if they are entitled to invade people’s business and dwelling places with arms and take away their hard-earned assets and their lives.
Recent events strongly suggest that the previous administration may have been ‘in bed’ with criminal elements who killed and maimed thousands of their own compatriots a decade ago.  Others were allowed to develop a successful underground economy with criminally acquired financial gain.  They have been utilizing one of Guyana’s key assets, its unfettered access to the Atlantic Ocean, and have turned the country into a narco-state which has taken up residence on the watch list of a number of global anti- (drug) trafficking agencies.
The history of the ‘New World’ (the West Indies, North and South America) since Columbus re-discovered it in 1492 is one of conquest, pillage, exploitation and forced migration of a people. For more than three centuries, millions of people were forcibly transported from their homes in Africa, across the perilous Atlantic Ocean (called the Middle Passage) to the West, where they were forced to labour on sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations.
In 1833 British Humanitarian Thomas Buxton presented The Emancipation Bill in Parliament which was passed and put into effect on 1st August 1834.  This became the first British Emancipation Proclamation and it signaled the beginning of the end of trafficking in African persons.
No one had anticipated that 181 years later, Guyanese people would still be downtrodden and embroiled in a struggle against eerily similar pillage of natural and manufactured resources, against exploitation and discrimination, and in a fight for their lawful rights and freedoms.
But we are thankfully at the end of that era.  Guyana is poised for take-off again with new developmental programmes designed for the benefit of every single Guyanese across all of our 83,000 sq. miles, to which Venezuela is not entitled.
This land is our land!

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