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The ‘curse of race’ remains relevant today
DEAR EDITOR,
May 26 marks 53 years since the attainment of political independence after some 150 years of British colonial rule. This is a good time to reflect on how far we have progressed as a nation in terms of socio-economic development and race relations.
The history of independence is a history of all manners of intrigues and machinations on the part of the British Government to forestall the conferral of independence status to the then colony of British Guiana mainly out of ideological and political considerations. It is not possible to go into the details of the circumstances that led to the delay by Britain to grant independence to the then colony of British Guiana. Suffice it to say except that independence was finally granted on May 26, 1966 after the Jagan-led PPP was removed from government in the 1964 elections in what the former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson described as a ‘fiddled constitutional arrangement unheard of in the British Commonwealth.’
It is common knowledge that the installation of the PNC-UF coalition government in 1964 marked a new chapter in our politics characterised by rigged elections and institutionalised one party de facto rule based on the self-proclaimed principles of party paramountcy.
I will posit the view that economically we have not done well especially when seen against the backdrop of an abundance physical and natural resources available to us. We remain poor even by regional standards and ranks among the poorest country in the western hemisphere on a per capita income basis. With the recent discovery of oil and gas, our per capita ranking is likely to improve but much will depend on how well we manage the sector.
Politically, the country remains polarised and efforts to move away from a ‘winner does not take it all’ model of governance to one of shared governance have been largely unsuccessful. We have made some limited progress in terms of constitutional reforms but certainly not enough to address the issue of ethnic insecurity. True enough, we have progressed over the decades from colonial rule to internal self-government and finally to political independence but the ‘curse of race’ as described by former British Colonial Secretary Duncan Sandy’s remains as relevant today as it was in the early 1960’s.
Hydar Ally
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