African Guyanese are rejecting their so-called leaders 

Aug 21, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Today, a group of persons purporting to speak for African Guyanese will once more try to deceive them. They have sponsored a Zoom programme alleging that Guyana is an emerging apartheid state.

They will speak to each other, be ignored by the majority of African Guyanese, and come again only to be ignored again. Read on and you will see the rising consciousness of African Guyanese. The use of the word “apartheid” for propaganda purpose will not resonate with Guyanese because they are too young to know what that was. But read on you will see how today’s Zoom programme will end in failure

Former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan after showing, through a statistical outlay, the gradual reduction of public sector jobs between 1985 and 1992 due to President Hoyte’s Structural Adjustment Programme is reported in the press as saying: “If you consider that the public sector is largely of African Guyanese, that’s nearly 40 percent of African Guyanese in the public sector who would have been out of a job and, therefore, had consequences for incomes, generational wealth, community savings and so forth,” he said.

Mr. Jordan did not stop there. He argued that by 1999, employment in the public sector was disappearing; from 17,062 in 1992 to 12,024 in 1999 constituted a further 30 percent drop. He intones, “So you could understand – no income, no wealth.”

Let’s quote Mr. Jordan’s President, David Granger. Speaking in his weekend programme, “The Public Interest,” he said on Friday, July 29, 2016 the following, “There is no magic wand. The Government cannot provide jobs in the government service, in the police force or the defence force. Employment is not something to be provided by the Government.”    

In his delivery done in Buxton last week, Mr. Jordan made no mention of that ideological position of his President. Mr. Jordan should be asked if he accepts that perspective of Mr. Granger.

From the photograph I have seen in the press, 51 persons attended and one has to subtract from that number cameramen and reporters. Now here is the interesting part and it has enormous significance for understanding the rising consciousness of African Guyanese and their increasing awareness that their leaders did not empower them from 2015 to 2020.

The press reports on Mr. Jordan’s lecture noted that there were “persistent questions” from the audience about what the APNU+AFC had done for African Guyanese when it was in power.

This was a talk in Buxton yet African Guyanese were not daunted in bringing up the seminal question – what the PNC did for Black people when it was in power? And it was in power as recent 2020.  This topic is going to follow PNC leaders wherever they go.

Unfortunately, no one in the small audience was armed with some relevant questions for Mr. Jordan. Here are some.  The license for animal drawn carts was raised by more than 100 percent. Research will show that almost 80 percent of the owners are African Guyanese.

One of the national budgets abolished the importation of used tyres and mandated that reconditioned cars cannot be more than eight years old. This was a bizarre direction because most of the taxi owners in Georgetown, New Amsterdam, and Linden, are African Guyanese. That policy hurt African Guyanese more than Indians. Interestingly, the post 2020 Government has scrapped that unjust edict.

Mr. Jordan’s President commissioned an official inquiry into the public service. The report was submitted on May 2016. Here is what the report recommended on page 84. I quote: “That the retirement for new entrants and those currently who are below 50 years, be retired after attaining 65 years of age….”

Here is an interesting part of the report in relation to the lamentation of Mr. Jordan about the state of the lack of money among African public servants. I quote once more from the report (page 83): “The higher retirement age of 65 would provide for higher pensions…we are convinced that a higher retirement age would be mutually beneficial to the State, the public employees and the NIS.”

I appeared in front of the commission asking for upping the retirement age. My appearance was carried in the press. No African Guyanese politician followed me. These days, I’m told I am racist.

A school of African leaders who bemoan the economic state of African Guyanese, do not ever mention the languishing youths in jail for marijuana possession, whenever they address African Guyanese people in any part of Guyana. They are afraid of that subject because it would invoke the wrath of African people.  Mr. Jordan and his President should never have been in power.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

 

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