Former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan sets the record straight

Oct 28, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

In yesterday’s Kaieteur News (KN), October 27, 2021, I was the centre of attention of your daily columnist, Freddie Kissoon. Ordinarily, I would not have responded; everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, his missive, ‘From “War Break” to “Aluta Continua”, offers me the opportunity to inform your readers of the facts. In that regard, my response is limited to the part of the article dealing with war break.
Freddie said that while I was in Bartica, addressing a crowd, (circa March 2019) I shouted out “war break!” He went on to claim, further, “On to this day, no one knows what he was referring to.” (sic)
Editor, I have sent to you the unedited tape of my roughly 18-minute speech, which can be sourced from YouTube. But, for the purpose of this letter, here is the relevant, verbatim extract, which I have reproduced for the benefit of Freddie and your readers:
“We are in a war; not the war using slings and arrows, or guns and bullets. But, we are in a war for the survival of ourselves; the survival of our children and the survival of the future generation of this country. We are in a war to execute the Green State Development Strategy using our bountiful resources that are expected to start flowing during next year [2020]. You got to understand this, comrade: nothing will be given to you; and you had the experience of 23 years. Is not me who telling you this. You experience 23 years under the last government and you said you had enough. And you gave us a chance. And, despite all the odds, all the odds, and all the different people and constituencies that didn’t vote for us, we still made certain that development was all-round. Some of our own … some of our supporters curse us out, buse us out, and said ‘we vote[d] for you and look at our communities. You leaving us to go to people who you don’t vote for.’ But, comrades, this is a government for all the people. We cannot, we cannot lower ourselves to those other people where partisan government, partisan government … Partisan development … Are you going to make the mistake, are you going to make the mistake to make those people come back to power to put their hands on our oil money? Comrades, are you going to make that mistake? Well, from today, comrade, War Break!”
I make no further comment; the extract is very pellucid, even to Freddie I would hope. Be that as it may, I do not intend to engage him anymore on this matter. Now, I return to my slumber, where I have retired to gain peace from this maddening and decaying society of ours.

Yours faithfully,
Winston Jordan
Former Minister of Finance

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