Relentless class bestialities in Guyana

Apr 23, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A 73-year-old pensioner has produced evidence to the NIS that he was employed for over twenty years at a well known family company that is into logging and related activities. But the NIS has no contributions for him. The complaint to the NIS took place over a month now. The non-payment of employees’ contribution is a criminal offence. This man’s predicament was given widespread coverage in the media. Yet to date, no charges have been filed against this well-known family business.
On Friday, the family business was able to get the police to charge an employee for company fraud. He was placed before the court. You call this juxtaposition of fates, class oppression. Throughout history, class oppression has given rise to revolution, whether it was the overthrow of the British monarch by Cromwell, the French Revolution, the American War of Independence, the Bolshevik overthrow of the Russian Tsar, the expulsion of the French in Yemen and Algeria, the Cuban Revolution, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the removal of the Shah in Iran, the toppling of Mubarak in Egypt, the Arab Spring in Tunisia, the fall of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, the overthrow of Eric Gairy in the Caribbean island of Grenada, class oppression breeds revolution.
Revolution may fail as it gets older and turn against itself or become more brutal than the fallen regime as we saw in Liberia with Samuel Doe, but once class repression exists, it will generate revolution. What has taken place under Presidents Jagdeo and Ramotar, and now the Coalition Government, is sustained class bias in the exercise of power that has virtually devastated the world of poor farmers, rural workers and the proletariat in general in Guyana. What is taking place in this country is naked oligarchy that the textbook on Latin America in the sixties referred to as the rule of the man on horseback.
The NIS pensioner’s plight is graphic material which one can use to indict a neoliberal state in Guyana that barefacedly refuses to criminally investigate a business for not paying NIS contributions for an Amerindian pensioner, but that very state uses its coercive arm to charge an employee for stealing from the very business the pensioner is complaining about – a pensioner that lives in the far-flung area of the interior were modern amenities are absent. This pensioner also told the readers of Kaieteur News that his brother died while on duty for this same family business, and his family did not receive his post-death benefits.
The oligarchic use of power in 21st century Guyana is even more obnoxious than the era of the man on horseback. A plane disappeared while on a flight from Ogle to the interior. The pilot and the baggage handler were never found and were presumed dead. When the wife of the bag handler went to collect her husband’s benefits, she was derecognized by a company that buys planes worth millions of American dollars. This company was a good friend to the last government; it is on good terms with the present government. This helpless lady was just another victim of class oppression.
A man is placed before the courts for fraud on a commercial bank. The amount is $44 million less than one billion dollars. He was placed on three million dollars bail by a magistrate whose bail assignments, for the most petty crimes, are seldom less than between $180,000 and $200, 000. The prosecutor didn’t raise the issue of flight risk. The magistrate didn’t see any contradiction in her bail amount. Obviously, the poorer you are the larger is the bail amount. It is called class oppression.
Nigel Hinds, the well known accountant/auditor has accused Clive Thomas of betraying the working class. He left out Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine and Tacuma Ogunseye. All three were comrades of Walter Rodney; all three had openly acknowledged the need for revolution against the Burnham regime. I was there with them. I wanted to create revolution too. The difference with me and them is that I still want to create revolution. And even more so because I believe the poor and powerless are even more pulverized than when Burnham was in power.
Rupert Roopnaraine, Clive Thomas and Tacuma Ogunseye referred to themselves as Rodneyites. I wonder if that poor Amerindian pensioner understands what Rodneyism, after the name of Walter Rodney, means. I wonder if the dead baggage handler’s wife knows what Rodneyism is. Poor Walter! He must be turning in his grave. I leave you with one of my favourite quotes; “God is dead, Marx is dead, and I’m not feeling too well myself.”

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Relentless class bestialities in Guyana

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