Burn the hatchet – supporting the call for social cohesion

Aug 21, 2020 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

I support the call made by Mr. G.H.K Lall for a “Truth and Reconciliation Mechanism” to address the racial dissonance prevailing in Guyana. My call is also encouraged by a letter carried in your Sat. 15th August edition written by my friend Winston Richard whose ethnicity, profession and beliefs are similar to mine. Hats off to you two gentlemen.
It is disorienting and petrifying to contemplate where we are as a nation. How disappointed would our ancestors be if they were to see where we are today because of vitriolic politics. Like Winston, as a child, I too witnessed the horrors of the early sixties while living on the Plaisance-Better Hope border, and I pray daily that good sense would prevail and save us from the road of no return. Sometimes I recoil when I hear the distorted regurgitations of that era coming from certain spin doctors using the press for their narrow ethnic and divisive ends. There is a crying need for a forum where truth will be sifted from lie.
I wish to suggest that the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) be the vehicle to initiate a process to collecting eye-witness stories of what life has been like in Guyana since 1953, the year I was born and when the Jagan-Burnham -PPP formed the first massed based Guyanese Government. I also heard that the PPP had its first congress in Buxton. I humbly suggest that the ERC stimulate active processes to genuinely and profoundly build bridges between the various people groups. I just don’t feel their presence or sense that the ERC is doing exploits to bring Guyanese together. I may be wrong, please correct me if I am. There is so much to gain and so much more to lose if we proceed along the current path of unjustified hatred and unnecessary suspicion.
I agree with Mr. G.H.K Lall who in another of his letters suggested that our history be documented and become a compulsory subject in our schools. Let us not leave it to parents because sins will be redacted and amplified depending on who is doing the retelling. There are many historians and civic leaders yet alive who must be allowed to tell the story. I know that some will be tempted to bend it to their view point but let them tell it and let us research it and let the riot be validated or villainized by the truth.
Last week I looked at the movie/biography (A United Kingdom) of Seretse Khamer and how he brought Bechuanaland (Botswana) into the modern age. I was hurt to see how far Guyana is fallen behind a country that was much more impoverished at the time of their independence. Both Guyana and Botswana gained independence in 1966. Guyana had no less than 10 times of the resources that landlocked and ideologically ostracized this southern African country. Botswana is just over twice Guyana geographically and it has three times Guyana’s population. Why can’t the descendants of the Ganges and the Nile sit down and share the enormous pie that the jackals have been raiding for the last twelve decades. Is it not time we wake up and confront the real enemy? For the sakes of our children and grandchildren, for the honour of our ancestors who suffered under slavery and later under indentureship. Let us wake up and cooperate for Guyana.
I thank you Mr. Glenn Lall for using your newspaper as a platform to challenge our political leaders to manage Guyana with altruism. I now ask you to embrace the call of not only informing but also to educate, aerate and radiate a culture of dialogue between all ethnicities. The voice of the ordinary man needs to be heard, because sometimes the voice of the representative does not reflect the reality of the represented. I would hope that the ERC can deepen its role by actively engaging cultural entities, political parties, religious organizations, the media, trade unions and the commercial sector to thicken the discussion, share thoughts and share experiences. Let’s begin to “ganga” talk with each other, as my friend Winston Richards said “there is so much love among us at the community level”, let us nurture that communal cohesion. It is our solemn duty to exorcise the bewitchment that has been suffocating this nation every time we go through the leadership selection cycles.
I know we can do better. We have done many things together and with all the resources we have we can do much greater things together. It is time for us to stand up, speak up and help each other up, out of the fetid acrimony that makes us behave like beasts and not human beings. I salute you Mr. GHK Lall (and all others like you) for being open minded and encouraging. I salute you Winston, I applaud you Pastor Richard James for your repeated call to let reason, dignity and common courtesy be the standard. I plead with you my fellow angry Guyanese to slow down, calm down and tone down the rhetoric that freely devastates and let us start listening to each other. Remember that the very air I breathe out is the one you breathe in. Let us start repairing the culture of respect and harmony.
My Mother (she only had a grade three education) warned me “it’s not what you say that matters it’s how you say it”. I say, Let us not bury the hatched, let us get rid of the hatchet of racism. Let us burn the damn thing.
The time is ripe for every Guyanese to take control of our destiny, to show that we are sensible and not pawns of those who would live lavishly while we scrape, crawl and beg for crumbs. Botswana did it in forty years, (their Pula is 11 to U$ 1) and we can do it too, for the coming generation.
There is no better time to start than now.
Mr. Glenn Lall I challenge you, Pas. John Smith I challenge you, leaders of the religious community I challenge you, teachers and educators I challenge you, media personnel I challenge you, and my fellow ordinary Guyanese I challenge you. Let us burn the hatchet and build a nation that sees only one People (human beings) working together, living together, encouraging each other to grasp a common shared and beautiful Destiny.

Michael O. S. Kendall Snr.

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