It’s difficult to predict when Guyanese will awaken to the reality of what’s happening

Oct 07, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

October 6th, 2022 marks the 42nd Anniversary of the FRAUDULENT 1980 Constitution. For 42 long years, the PNC and the PPP have ruled by fraud and force, completely unaccountable to the Guyanese nation and immune from prosecution.

The notoriously rigged Referendum of July 10th, 1978 paved the way for the PNC Government to put off general election due in October of that year for another two years while the party formulated its draft which was accepted by its two-thirds parliamentary majority and imposed on the Guyanese nation as the New People’s Constitution. Opposition to the Referendum of July 10th, 1978 was widespread and included the PPP, the WPA, other political parties, civil society, and thousands of Guyanese of different races and classes.

What is truly amazing is how this popular support that was mobilised to oppose the referendum accepted and has lived under the Burnham Constitution for 42 years fully aware of the process that led up to its imposition. The PPP that had boycotted the October 6th parliamentary session that ushered in the Constitution quietly returned to participate in the illegitimate parliament.

The ABC+EU turned a blind eye to the electoral frauds and the emergence of a bloody, brutal DICTATORSHIP under the PNC omnipotent leader LFS Burnham. There was no organised RESISTANCE to the Burnham DICTATORSHIP in the aftermath of WALTER RODNEY’S assassination. Burnham jokingly said they scattered like goat shit! Most of the members of the Political Educational Bureau (PEB) and of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) deserted the party overnight. Those who remained quietly acquiesce the Burnham Constitution.

But the table turned following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Dr. Jagan, a rabid anti-imperialist somersaulted 360° into the mighty arms of US imperialism. Dr. Cheddi Jagan was a changed man, having spent 28 years in the political wilderness and had learned from his mistakes. He was a veteran politician, underestimated by the younger generation of political aspirants. With WALTER RODNEY and Burnham out of the way, he knew that the Guyanese people trusted him and he made many promises of the Dawn of a new era and the return of Democracy. He cunningly deceived Guyanese that rewriting the Burnham Constitution was first on his agenda fully aware that it would require a two-thirds majority and that the PNC would never agree with destroying the Burnham legacy.

Constitutional Reform was next placed on the agenda. Dr. Cheddi Jagan, author of the ‘West on Trial’ opened up the floodgates to the big Capitalist Consortiums, ‘OMAI’ was the first. Within less than a decade ‘OMAI’ charted off more gold from Guyana than the Spanish conquistadors carried away from the seat of the Inca empire Peru in 70 years yet there was no improvement in the living standards of the Guyanese nation nor development.

His successor Jagdeo used the powers of the Executive President in a manner that made the Burnham era pale into insignificance. He grounded the low-income Guyanese into poverty by imposing a 16% VAT on every item that sent the cost of living skyrocketing. His notorious black clothes police killed off hundreds of young Guyanese of African descent. The giveaway of our timber to Bai Shan Lin and our Canje and Kaieteur blocks to the big oil baron.

Given that the PPP leaders were granted immunity under the Burnham Constitution they returned less than 5 years later with an electoral victory over the PNC led coalition of parties which by some strange twist of fate included WALTER RODNEY’S Party, the WPA /R for Reform, and the AFC made up of a set of political rejects.

After 23 years of tyrannical rule by the PPP, Guyanese felt for the PNC Coalition’s electoral ploy of ‘Vote like a Boss’, ‘jobs for young people’, ‘the good life’, ‘Constitutional Reform’, and more. The PPP were to pay for the atrocities they committed once they find their trail they were going to jail their tail. Guyanese quickly found out that the good life was only for the PNC and their acolytes. Nothing had changed, instead, poor people who were making a living outside the Stabroek Market were forcibly removed, mind you, these were supporters of the APNU+AFC. When Parliamentary sessions were in progress half of the city was closed to the public, even under the tyranny of Burnham and Jagdeo this never happened. The APNU+AFC became Guyana’s worse nightmare.

Many people were happy to see the last of them and hoped after 19 months of titanic struggle and Covid lockdown that the PPP Government under President Irfaan Ali, would have brought some relief to the downtrodden Guyanese masses, especially with the ABC+EU countries advocating the need for Constitutional and electoral reform, but after two years and three mammoth size budgets exceeding gyd$1.5 Trillion, the plight of the poor and powerless Guyanese continues to worsen.

Constitutional Reform has been relegated to the back burner. While the PPP has clearly shown that our oil/gas wealth benefits only the political Elites, party loyalists, their families, supporters, and financial backers, and from time to time behaving as benevolent rulers, giving out a little handout here and there.

After 42 years of living under the FRAUDULENT Burnham Constitution, it’s difficult to predict when Guyanese will awaken to the reality of what’s happening…It took the Chileans over four decades to rid themselves of the draconian Pinochet Constitution and that process is still ongoing but Guyana is not Chile our historical circumstances differ.

WALTER RODNEY in his short lifetime had shown the way forward.

 Yours Faithfully,
Desmond Alli (General Secretary,  Guyana United Artists)

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