Dear Editor,
Your editorial of Wednesday, October 24, captioned “Ashes of the past” was a cheap attack on Mrs Jagan and can only be described as unfair, unjust, unkind and unwarranted. The late Arthur Abraham, a senior public servant, along with seven of his children , died tragically in a fire at his home in 1964 at the height of the political and ethnic violence at that time. Mr Frederick Kissoon reported in the Kaieteur News recently, regurgitating hearsay and with not a shred of evidence, that the late Arthur Abraham was helping the then opposition forces and was targeted by the PPP. Most people in Guyana know that Mr Kissoon is so wildly irresponsible and is so full of irrational loathing for the PPP that he should be left to dwell alone in his miasma of hatred.
Nevertheless, the daughter of the late Arthur Abraham, Ms Diana Abraham, called on Mr Kissoon to withdraw his statement that her late father was helping the opposition forces.
If anyone “stirred the ashes of the smouldering controversy” it was not Mrs Jagan, as you alleged, but Mr Kissoon together with your vain attempt to link the PPP with the violent events of that period and the alleged prosecution of Anne Abraham, another daughter of Arthur Abraham.
Mr Editor, you are well aware that the origin of the violence of the sixties, as exposed in US official documents, scholarly writings and your own previous editorials, was with the PNC and the UF assisted and financed by British and American intelligence and that the objective of that violence was the removal of the PPP government from office.
It is no surprise that you fail to mention that Mrs Jagan resigned in protest from her own government as Minister of Home Affairs at that time because of her inability to influence the police to take steps to stop the violence directed against the PPP and its supporters. At that time PPP leaders and supporters were being harassed and incarcerated while opposition leaders and supporters were allowed to roam freely and to publicly encourage, instigate and inflict the violence set out in the PNC’s X 13 Plan, the implementation of which was supported by its partner, the UF.
You disingenuously omitted these events because you would have had to explain how it was that Mrs Jagan or her government were complaining about the inaction of the police in relation to criminal activity against the PPP but simultaneously had the ability to influence the police in the opposite direction of allegedly persecuting the opposition, including Anne Abraham, as alleged by you.
Your editorial is clearly the work of a skilled propagandist who seeks to record for Guyana a distorted and twisted historical mindset for the purpose of perpetuating the myth, long discredited, that somehow the PPP had a responsibility for what happened in the early sixties and consequently to the Abraham family. This warped conception of reality, that the PPP self flagellated and inflicted violence on itself and against its own interests, is very much at odds with common sense and the historical record and , in relation to the Abraham family, the view among several senior PPP leaders at the time, now articulated by Mrs Jagan, that Arthur Abraham was a distinguished public servant of competence and rectitude, whatever political views he and the members of his family may have entertained and whatever political activities his daughter, Anne Abraham, may have been engaged in. Mrs Jagan seized the opportunity of the exchange between Mr Kissoon and Ms Abraham and made a humble attempt to let the public and Ms Abraham know, however belatedly, that whatever the circumstances that surrounded the tragic events at that time, including the political controversies, upheavals and the pain, leaders of the PPP held Arthur Abraham in high esteem.
Your attempt to pour scorn on this effort and diminish it is quite disgraceful.
Yours faithfully,
Donald Ramotar
General Secretary
People’s Progressive Party
