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What are your thoughts? The incredible transfer of Guyana resources to a tiny cabal

Mar 30, 2016 Letters, News

Dear Editor,
Guyana has always been a hypocritical society when it comes to discussing ethnicity and its racial consequences. We understand fully how ethnicity has shaped our history and politics, yet we avoid any frank discussion about it. In fact, we punish those who dare to raise it in the open by deeming them racist.
This is one of the most disgusting aspects of our political culture that is practiced even by some sections of the media. The instances of censorship when it comes to discussion of race and ethnicity have become the rule rather than the exception. It is at the root of our inability to overcome our ethnic challenges.
The discourse surrounding the recent reports of the government commissioned audits is a typical case. The reports are now out in the open. The revelations are startling. They reveal a wholesale transfer of state resources to a tiny cabal of mostly members of the Indian Guyanese elite. Yet many would dare not go there; we prefer to talk about Mr. Jagdeo transferring State resources to his close friends. But who are is close friends? Too which ethnic do they belong? There are    a party- political, a social class and an ethnic dimension to those transfers.
You simply do not unlawfully transfer all of those resources to one ethnic group and not expect, in our ethnically charged society, to be charged with systemic racism. Resources are pivotal to the accumulation of wealth and when one group enjoys a monopoly on those resources, you are courting ethnic discontent. The basis of ethnic domination lies in the economic empowerment of one group and a simultaneous disempowerment of another group.
None of our early leaders, from Burnham to Hoyte to Jagan engaged in such wholesale transfer of state resources into the hands of a small private clique.  I believe that these leaders understood the ethnic consequences of such transfer. And I believe that Mr. Jagdeo and his leadership understand those ethnic consequences. Yet, they went ahead with the transfers.
Although the Indian Guyanese masses do not benefit directly from this unlawful concentration of resources in the elite of their ethnic group, in our ethnically divided environment the symbolism has far-reaching consequences for ethnic balance.  I am contending that the corruption under the PPP was partly ethnically motivated and would in the end have ethnic consequences.
African Guyanese, who have been dispossessed of ancestral lands will not take very lightly the transfer of state lands into the private hands of the East Indian elite. They should not take lightly such transfers into the hands of the elite of any ethnic group, including their own.
So we now have a Guyana in which ownership of common resources are disproportionately in the hands of one group. That should not be allowed to stand. I am opposed to the rape of state resources from a social-class standpoint. Denying the poor while enriching the rich is wrong and ugly.
I oppose those actions from a purely political standpoint. Governments should not facilitate corruption; it’s undemocratic. I am opposed to using government for unfair ethnic distribution of state resources. It is ugly, dangerous and morally wrong. African Guyanese and poor people of all races have a duty to press this government to recover those resources and to put measures in place so that what the PPP did does not happen again.
David Hinds

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