‘DEI, nationalism, racism in Guyanese politics’

Mar 10, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor

Not long into the term of the 1992 People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government, President Cheddi Jagan was concerned that Guyanese contractors were finding it difficult to win large government contracts such as the one having to do with the West Demerara sea defence and asked me whether in my opinion the government could break such contracts into smaller packages to facilitate the contractors. I said that some important quality and cost difficulties would have to be overcome if he intended to do so, but that other than that, I could not see why it could or should not be done. Contracts were awarded to more Guyanese contractors and a few, who as it turned out were mainly Indians, became quite wealthy.

Fast forward: according to one assessment, by the 2012 census Guyanese of Indian descent represented 39.8% of the population and Guyanese of African descent 29.3%, but of  the 288 contract awards listed on the National Procurement and Tender Administration (NPTA)  website in 2022 – some 3 decades later – 56.9% were awarded to businesses owned or operated by Guyanese of Indian descent; 72.8% of the total dollar value of awards went to businesses owned or operated by Guyanese of Indian descent; 10.4% of contracts awarded were to businesses owned or operated by Guyanese of African descent; 7.1% of the total dollar value of awards went to businesses owned or operated by Guyanese of African descent; contracts were awarded 5 times as often to contractors of Indian descent as to those of African descent. The dollar value of contracts awarded to Guyanese firms with Indian descent ownership or management was 10 times greater than that awarded to firms owned or managed by Guyanese of African descent, and interestingly, the value of tenders awarded to foreign companies exceeds that awarded to Guyanese of African descent (Domination. VV,11/12/2022).

It concluded that, as suggested in the first paragraph, ‘initially they (Indian contractors) lacked the requisite skills and machinery, which meant their work was consistently substandard.  But PPP agenda wasn’t national development but race empowerment. As a result, inferior quality work went without penalty, creating a financial burden for taxpayers. The result is that dating back to 1992, the PPP Indo-Guyanese base was provided a 25 year head start over Afro-Guyanese. Thus, even with transparent processes, a 25 year unfair advantage to Indo-Guyanese means Afro-Guyanese are inherently disadvantaged (Ibid).

Although it needs to be nuanced, the above trajectory is substantially correct. Cheddi Jagan’s affirmative action benefitted largely Indo-Guyanese and over its near 30 years in government no significant efforts were made by his successors to study and rectify this problem. Indeed, if anything, the present regime has in place policies that are intended to make the situation worse.

For example, over the decades, the PPP regime has deliberately degraded public service salaries with its unilateral annual 5% increases that are paid at the end of the given calendar year and between 2020 and 2023, central government expenditure as a percent of GDP declined from 28.4% to 24.6% but current expenditure declined from 21.7% to 10.8%.  The wages and salaries of public sector workers declined from 6.3% to 3.1%. What is most interesting is that expenditure for capital works, which mainly go to Indian Guyanese who overwhelmingly support the PPP, has gone in the opposite direction. It was 6.7% in 2020 and 13.4 percent in 2023 (Guyana: IMF December 2023 Article IV Consultation and Staff Report).

The PPP cannot sensibly respond to the above and the following is an attempt to do so by Dr. Leslie Ramsammy. ‘In terms of Afro-Guyanese being engaged in businesses and as contractors, there have never been more Afro-Guyanese-owned businesses, more Afro-Guyanese contractors ever in Guyana. Here is a truth that Alexander and his ilk cannot escape – in 2025, the number of Afro-Guyanese who have started businesses, are far, far more than in 2020 or ever before. (T)he number of big Afro-Guyanese contractors today exceed by far what existed at any other time in our history. In addition, not a single new Afro-Guyanese contractor emerged between 2015 and 2020 when his party was in government (KN: 03/03/2025).

Ramsammy is inviting us to equate 4 years of coalition government with nearly 30 years of PPP rule and a short non-oil period with a time of resource abundance. He wants us to place importance on the quantity of ‘so-called contractors’ rather than on the nature and value of their contracts. He is suggesting that we forget the decades of PPP rule and only consider 2020 to 2025, when that party was openly being cajoled by the international community (please remember its celebratory poster of the Trump victory) to reform and become more inclusive, transparent and equitable, and has responded with a mishmash of undemocratic, unstructured interventions to ease international concerns and of course, attempt to buy African votes.

Dr. Ramsammy said that contrary to what some say, Guyana is not an apartheid state. But the essence of apartheid is the de jure or de facto policy of the state to implement and maintain the domination of one ethnic group over the other and that is precisely what is taking place here, where the Indian dominated and supported PPP and its associated have ‘captured the state’ and are using it in an attempt to herd Africans into its ranks.

It would, however, be unfair to say of Cheddi Jagan that his ‘agenda wasn’t national development [but] race empowerment’. Firstly, one should not blame him for attempting to make the tendering process more favourable to Guyanese businesspeople, Jagan was a communist, i.e. a nationalist and an internationalist.   Secondly, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is a framework in which Affirmative Action is only one aspect that contains practical legal steps that address historical injustices, level the playing field for those who have faced systemic barriers and respond to the disfunctions of capitalism. It is rooted in the United Nations Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both of which demand adherence to fundamental principles of human dignity, equality, and non-discrimination. It became popular in liberal democracies in the 1950s and 60s precisely when Jagan was doing his politicking.

Thirdly, it was when Jagan was alive that the idea was first broached to have some department of ‘empowerment,’ meaning then, democratic efforts at African empowerment to improve their condition and hopefully win their support. Thirdly, when the public service unions repeatedly struck demanding historic wages realignments that the government claimed were unaffordable, unprecedentedly and against the wishes of many in his part, Jagan allowed them and their representatives to peruse the government records to find any money! Fourthly, in about 1994, I went to Cheddi with the idea of selling all the 2200 government flats to their owners, who were mainly Africans, for what I considered a small sum. Jagan suggested that they be given to them free.  I thought that in the context of resource shortage for housing his position was absurd and we finally agreed to a small, almost meaningless, price.

In a nutshell, this column has repeatedly argued that while Forbes Burnham was manipulating elections the PPP was using an ideological admixture of the PNC’s skullduggery and racism to hold its supporters. The result is that matters not how incompetent, undemocratic and corrupt the party, its traditional support would remain largely solid. Following the 1999 resignation of President Janet Jagan and the 2001 vitiation of her presidency, the PPP came to understand that it would not be able to democratically win sufficient African support to continue its ethnic dominance. Many observers have been suggesting that it is possible to protect ethnic interests by liberal democratic means, but personal and collective interests in the PPP have merged and it is most unlikely that the personal autocratic power facilitated by malignant arrangements such as ‘democratic centralism’ can be sustainable.

Sincerely

Dr. Henry Jeffrey

 

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