Dear Editor,
I said this before and I will say it again, even at the expense of this letter finding the waste basket as others of similar tone seem to have done. There is a double standard in the independent press in terms of what it finds acceptable to print, and based on which side is at the receiving end of the criticism. And that is what triggered my critical comment in a previous unprinted letter that the government’s withdrawal of advertisements from SN was a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Yes, like every freedom loving Guyanese I believe that this withdrawal represented shades of the worst challenge to a free press seen in this hemisphere for some time. But when the newspapers allow those who carry the torch for the ruling party to say just about anything as long as the target is the PNC or African Guyanese, those on whose behalf they postulate soon take this as an indication of their divine right to do and say whatever they feel without checks or restraints.
Writing under the caption of “Mr Green is the last person to talk about National Heritage” the unsigned author claims that quote, “Starting with the Amerindians, his party in office ordered the removal of Amerindians against widespread protests, from the UMRP Grid and flooded the entire settlement destroying the livelihood of the Amerindians to facilitate a ‘pipe dream’ of Burnham and the PNC. I do recall certain ‘protestable’ appointments/ promotions of hundreds in the Guyana Public and Teaching Services during my tour of duty 1966-1988.” The fact that there is no name to this letter seriously brings into issue the credibility of the writer, but moreso, the project cited and the circumstances of the wrong done. (editor’s note: the writer was Mr Seopaul Singh and his name appears in the letter).
The writer claims that the PNC ordered the removal of Indigenous Peoples from the Upper Mazaruni area that represented the UMRP Grid. And I have some serious issues with that claim, since I was in that area at the time and cannot recall the removal of any settlement, or for that matter the flooding of any village or settlement, since the construction phase of any dam had never even gotten underway. And we can examine this in more detail. According to my recollection the UMRP or Upper Mazaruni Road Project was tandemly linked to preparatory work and surveys being carried out for the Hydro-Electric Project between 1976 and 1980. The villages that faced extinction if the dam was constructed at its projected site would have been Kamarang and its environs, Kaku, Jawalla, Waramadong, Pipilipai, Chinoweng, and other little settlements proximately attached to or located in between these areas. But apart from the rising waters occasioned by seasonal rainfall, these villages and settlements were never subjected to the kind of flooding alleged by this writer. And neither was there ever any removal or mass exodus of people from these areas during the period in question. Surely these allegations should not be printed without some measure of substantiation, because they amount to serious charges. Would like allegations made against the current party in government have been given space, without even a name or an explanation for the absence of a name.
Whenever the current government is taken to task over some area having to do with perceptions of ethnic preferences, the claims of 28 years of African economic domination and advantages always surface. And so bankrupt is our capacity to examine things beyond the scope of their surfaced representations, that the inanity of these claims evade the kind of scrutiny that would show how ridiculous they are. Surely if the domination the writer referenced had a germ of economic reality it would be manifested in ownership and control of resources way beyond that resident in the hands of African Guyanese at the moment. So skewed is this kind of thinking that it completely ignores the fact that the areas where African Guyanese predominate, and have always predominated long before the advent of the PNC coming to power, happen to be the lowly public service sectors with its dilapidated infrastructures, miserly wages, and heavy and compulsory tax deductions. In effect what this writer and others of like mindset are putting forth is the notion that Africans have no right to protest against anything done by this administration, and they haul up a slew of allegations to present as reasons why such protests should be muted.
I fancy that there are tangible issues one could cite that represent wrongdoing during the failed Upper Mazaruni Hydro-Electric project. And the same goes for the twenty-eight years the PNC was in power. But to fabricate what amounts to ethnic cleansing clearly bespeaks an evil and macabre intent. Why is this double standard permitted? Why is this “give a dog a bad name and hang him” trend of media standard tolerated? Does there have to be an African owned newspaper in order for there to be a balance in terms of the views that are allowed to proliferate from print media in Guyana?
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
Editor’s note
Unlike what Mr Williams suggests, this newspaper has published numerous letters offering strong criticisms of this government and its predecessors. We do not believe that an impartial judge can detect any bias in our publication of letters.
