IDPADA-G opposes conferral of African leadership award on Pres. Ali

Jan 25, 2024 News

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Kaieteur News – The International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly- Guyana (IDPADA-G) has opposed the move by the African Prosperity Network to bestow the African Global leadership award to President Irfaan AIi and has called on the group to withdraw the award.

President Ali will be honoured for his strong and transformational leadership during an Official Visit to Accra, Ghana, this week, the Office of the President said in a press release. The Head of State departed Guyana on Wednesday and will return to Georgetown on Monday, January 29, 2024. President Ali will be conferred with the prestigious Global Africa Leadership Award for his “strong and transformational leadership” since taking office in August 2020.

The honour also recognises President Ali’s commitment to building ‘One Guyana’ by emphasising the need for unity, inclusivity, and shared prosperity and his strong and principled leadership during the period of heightened tension due to the border controversy between Guyana and Venezuela. During his official visit, the President is also expected to deliver the keynote address at the Presidential Dialogues session and participate in panel discussions at the Africa Prosperity Dialogues Summit of Heads of State and Business Leaders.

Meanwhile, in a letter to the group IDPADA-G called on the African Prosperity Network to withdraw its bestowal of the African Global leadership award to AIi. IDPADA-G said it was created to pursue the mandate of the United Nations (UN) declared Decade for people of African descent addressing the abiding legacies of slavery.

At the centre of that mandate is the pursuit of changes to the “legal and institutional frameworks” of the state in the interest of reparative
justice for the people of African descent. “Unfortunately, the Government of Guyana, as the fundamental apparatus of the State of Guyana, has not crafted a programme for the realisation of that UN objective. Rather, the current Government has made laudable statements about the resilience of the people of African descent in defiance of slavery and offered its commitment to advocate for reparative programmes as recompense for the dehumanizing crime of slavery.”
The IDPADA-G said while making politically correct statements on the international stage, the Ali Government’s domestic actions are completely antithetical to its international posture. “It has articulated that there is no need for special attention or corrective action to address the post-slavery perpetuation of legal and institutional frameworks that continue to negatively impact the material and psychosocial reality of
African Guyanese. In fact, the government has doubled down on these harmful legacies, facilitating instead the continuity of the pre-emancipation state arrangements put in place to the detriment of people of African descent. His administration has compounded the already parlous circumstances by virtue of public policies and the conduct of public affairs that militate against the interest of the African Guyanese community,” IDPADA-G.

Citing examples, IDPADA-G listed the discontinuation of the RAID project that was intended to rehabilitate the farm lands in four African Guyanese communities;
the insistence on by-passing and under-cutting locally elected representatives of African
Guyanese communities and their civil society organizations, like IDPADA-G, preferring rather to engage in so-called’direct’contact with the people; the wanton disregard for the human rights and lives of people of African descent, such as the extra-judicial killings of African Guyanese as in the cases of Orin Boston, Quindon Bacchus and others; the wanton disregard for the property rights of people of African descent as exhibited in the
bulldozing of the homes, and destruction of the livelihoods of the people of Mocha-Arcadia,
under the pretext of road development; the constant threat of loss of cooperatively owned lands and the brazen forfeiture of co-operatively owned property, as in the case of the Essequibo Regional Co-operative Union building and the movable asset therein.

“It is against this backdrop of the Irfaan Ali regime’s hostility and disrespect for African
Guyanese that IDPADA-G has viewed the intention of the African Prosperity Network to present him with an award. We are dismayed, disappointed and infuriated that an organization out of Ghana, through an aspirant investor here in Guyana, has decided to present its ‘Global African Leadership Award” to a President who cannot be more undeserving…”

 

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• African Global, President Irfaan AIi, Prosperity Network, The IDPADA-G, United Nations

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