H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Contributor’s note: this article amends, in parts, its original, as was previously published elsewhere

Oct 05, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – The PNC went to Washington, DC, recently.  It should have stayed put, and enjoyed the incinerating heat of Guyana.  The PNC team was not James Stewart’s, ‘Mr. Smith goes to Washington’, but a damp squib that fizzled out.

What the PNC team did in Washington was to roast itself alive, and over a slow, public fire for good measure.  The burning issue on the table was discrimination against the party’s supporters, primarily Black Guyanese.  Long before the time was over, or the listening Congressional team that consented to give the visiting PNC team an audience were done, the Guyanese travelers and pleaders were in ashes.

So, where does this leave this incendiary and animosity driven matter involving political and racial discrimination?  It is either present here, or it isn’t.  According to the PPP Government, it has emerged from a testing moment looking good before the world.  To say this another way, there is no such thing as political or racial discrimination in Guyana, and that is the end of the story.  Except that it is not.  Not as I see matters.

One of the first things I learned from my years in the cold, was that when high access is granted, then the moment has to be seized with both hands, and milked for all that it is worth.  Don’t just walk with problems, be sure to offer possible solutions.  Make a good impression, and the door is always open for a second round.  Make a fool of self, and the door is slammed shut on the way out, rarely to be reopened.  I think the latter covers where the PNC stands currently.  In other words, go prepared for most eventualities, or don’t go at all; most of all, don’t go with ‘two lang haan’ as Guyanese would say.  By any measurement, this is a rank injustice to its people (and others) who are struggling under the weights of either subtle or barefaced discrimination, and are now forced to face the reality of another failure by its own.

Correction: as was shared by those present, with 33 supporting pieces of detail, the PNC did have some significant evidence in hand at the conference.  I stand corrected, and regret this error.

Credible and convincing legwork has been done, and reveals that discrimination has been practiced in some sensitive protective constitutional agencies, and serious wrongdoing tabled.  Regarding the sharing of relief monies to Guyanese who have been hit hard, the record is of a distinct skew in who gets more, who gets less, who gets nothing at all, and who gets more often, when the inexplicable is at work about contracts, opportunities, land, and more.  The complaints and comparisons emphasize the political ugliness and racial inequity that have been at work, given those who have repeatedly come up shorthanded. On sharing in the national patrimony there has been mainly only one kind of people. With these areas alone, the PNC had enough persuasive material to make a halfway decent case about discrimination in Guyana during its time in Washington.

Opposition Leader, Norton had to speak less, give other members of his team opportunity to articulate their insights.  But, the evidence not being there, as the PPP chortled, does not tell either the full or true story.  A fact-finding visit has been mentioned, and that will prove or disprove where discrimination stands here.

Now, I proceed along another line.  The PPP Government has been strident to the point of shrillness, [and truculence] whenever discrimination is tabled.  Previously, PPP pundits have been quick to whittle down or dismiss discrimination contentions as yet more instances of anti-PPP naysayers making mountains out of ant’s nests.  Nonetheless, there is the record of leading government figures running around and putting down sharp agitations in too many Black communities for comfort.  Those residents were neither creating a ruckus for fun; nor because their hands idled.  They live with neighbors and see firsthand the disparities in the distribution of government favors; plus, they labor with their own hardscrabble conditions.  In today’s oil rich Guyana, all should see economic oases, and they ought not to be the mirages that they are for those on the wrong side of the PPP.

Since claims of racial discrimination are treated as nonexistent by the PPP, it is strange that both the government and party leaders go out of their way to attack those who call them out, about discrimination, lack of robust oil management, and no pioneering and transformational leadership of the kind needed here.  The three areas are all interrelated: do well in one, and the others are boosted for the better.  Why even give the time of day to those who are critical of the PPP Government on the hot button issue of racial discrimination? Since there is nothing of substance on that score, then it is better to leave them alone, and let the world see them for how the party wishes them to be seen.  As agitators.  As troublemakers.  As dividers.

From my perspective, when the PPP brass focus so much and so hostilely on those who speak of racial discrimination here, it is as if there is something to hide.  I begin to think that there is a big family secret that is best covered up, not even to be muttered in private parlays.  Sometimes, government leaders protesterd too much, and PPP fundamentalists spill too much ink.  The bottom line is that if racial discrimination is negligible, then all Guyanese should be living happily and contentedly.  Now, I want to see who would try to push that one on anybody.

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

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• amends, article, damp, Guyana, measure

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