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Guyanese being ridiculed over Election Count

Apr 28, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

West Indians are insulting Guyanese telling them they can’t count numbers because of the boldface fraud perpetrated by some at GECOM.
When I was a university student during the 1970s and 80s studying among West Indians at City College, they used to poke fun at Guyanese at varied interactions, including at social get-togethers or meetings of the Caribbean Students’ Association, or in regular discourse on campus.
Guyanese and other West Indians were in large numbers at CCNY and at Brooklyn College and the junior two-year colleges. West Indians would remind us that Guyana was supposed to be the breadbasket of the region and instead the region had to literally send bread to Guyana.
They laughed at us over electoral frauds. They poked fun at the number of Guyanese who were deported from their islands violating immigration laws and how many were embarrassed being sent to sit at a bench specially reserved for Guyanese seeking entrance at various airports in the region.
Some endured abuses and insults as they waited processing of their entrance stamp.
I know about these abuses meted out to Guyanese because I visited the islands and interacted with West Indians in New York as a student over many years. I used to be an elected representative in undergraduate and graduate student governments (serving in various titles including Vice President, President, Senator, Councillor, etc.) from 1978 and thru the 1980s and would hear their sarcastic remarks about Guyana at government meetings or during Club Hours (every Thursday from noon to 2 PM).
I also served as a rep of my student government at the Citywide monthly university student governments’ gathering (some 14 campuses at that time which now has expanded to some 22 campuses) held in mid-Manhattan (somewhere around 76th Street) Westside.
West Indians used to cluster together at these monthly policymaking forums to address issues impacting students from the lower classes. And even there I was subjected to sardonic sneers or jokes about Guyana. Even when I attempted to get refreshments, some would comment, “You better take enough, because you won’t get any in Guyana”. It was all done in good jest to evoke laughter about the terrible state of affairs of our Guyana during the period of dictatorship, when starvation had really set in. I used to also hear sneering remarks about Guyana when I served for over a decade as my teachers’ union rep at monthly citywide meetings.
Those snide remarks of the past have now given away to a new mockery. “You all can’t count numbers. After two months, you all still can’t count 450K ballots”. One remarked, “My grandchildren can count the ballots in two days”. That is the kind of ridicule that GECOM has subjected us to – those of us living in the region and in the diaspora.
I should note that just four years ago, islanders were in praise of Guyana over oil discovery and prospective wealth. Earlier this month, they jeered, “your oil is worth nothing” as the oil market collapsed. And now we are back to the period of being taunted relating to electoral fraud.
GECOM please do the right thing and spare Guyanese of further abuses of derision by correctly counting the votes.
Yours truly,
Dr. Vishnu Bisram

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