‘Independence’ or ‘subservience’

Dec 08, 2018 Letters

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Dear Editor,

The experienced and erudite lawyer, statesman and politician Mr Ralph Ramkarran in his Blog, Conversation Tree, gave sound advice when he said that, ‘The AFC is at a fork in the road. Logic would suggest that it should take the bend leading to independence. Necessity for survival, as the AFC would perceive it, would force it to take the bend leading to further subservience to APNU.’ This was on December 1st, 2018. The choice was ‘independence’ or ‘subservience’.
However, what the Public Security Minister, Mr Khemraj Ramjattan said in his 2019 Budget speech clearly dispelled any remnants of doubt whatsoever that the AFC has chosen the latter ‘fork in the road’ proposed by Ramkarran – they have chosen the road to ‘further subservience to APNU’, more specifically the PNC. It is amusing to see the AFC Leader vying hard for the top spot.
When I read the headline in the media that, ‘Ramjattan sees parallel between PPP’s stance on sugar workers and PNCR Chairman’s position on jobs for supporters’ I was totally dumbfounded. But it serves to confirm that the Chairman of the Alliance for Change is totally myopic and has allowed his dislike not only for the PPP but for the sugar workers who refused to vote for his party, to take precedence over the survival of the AFC as an independent political force.
The bashing the AFC received was simply too much, so he threw caution to the wind and spewed his venom at random towards the sugar workers. He incorrectly drew this comparison, ‘Volda made a statement recently that she’ll get some employment for her people. You want to say that that is wrong, but when you state all the time that you got to employ sugar workers, you got to employ sugar workers that is not wrong. That is not jobs for the boys? Oh! That is not jobs for the boys. If it is anything it is also jobs for the boys. You want us to employ your people because you are very strong in the sugar estate areas and we must pump more, we must pump more. No! We will certainly have to bring it to an end”.
It is quote unfortunate a Vice President of this country can see a sugar worker’s job ‘as jobs for the boys’. More so, that Vice President so consumed in his disregard for the sugar workers failed to realize that Volda Lawrence subsequently made this statement, ‘I have learned that as a leader I must be cognizant of what I say and do, and must not allow emotions or political fervour to get in the way. So to all those whom I have offended in one way or another, I humbly apologize’. Something is definitely wrong with the way he looks at issues.
This man who was born, bred and raised among sugar workers and farmers forgot that thousands of sugar workers voted for the AFC in 2011 and in 2015. He forgot that the same sugar workers would have comprised members and supporters of APNU as well. But Ramkarran hit the nail plumb on the head when he succinctly and conclusively stated that, ‘The PPP supporters which the AFC had encouraged to cross over have now moved away because the AFC now appears not as a moderating influence on APNU (PNCR), but as a facilitator’.
May I add a willing ‘facilitator’ for a brewing dictatorship reign. This was the final nail in the coffin. Ramjattan knows full well that the AFC has not a glimmer of hope in deceiving the sugar workers once again, so it is time to ‘nail’ them to the proverbial cross.
He seemed to suffer convenient amnesia that in order to get votes in 2015, it was the AFC and not APNU which went into the sugar workers’ communities with leaflets promising ‘20% wage increase across the board’. I confronted an AFC member from Fyrish with the leaflet in my village and he was adamant that the AFC would give that increase. Moreover, the AFC was on television in Berbice promising the same, one of them who now works with the Public Security Ministry had even said that ‘cane cutters will not get the black thing on their skin anymore’. It was a rosy picture for sugar. Then in January this year it was claimed that God wanted sugar to fail because oil is found!
Let me remind Mr Ramjattan that it is the responsibility of the Government to ensure that the dismissed sugar workers are taken care of even before being severed. It has an obligation to provide support for the livelihoods of those affected by the sugar sector reform it wants to implement (EU’s National Adaptation Strategy stipulation).
Since the Coalition has miserably failed to do so, then it is the responsibility of the Opposition to remind them and agitate on the dismissed workers’ behalf, and it has nothing to do with political affiliation. Get real Ramjattan!

Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
RDC Councilor Region 6

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