Dear Editor,

I wish to correct an error in my letter published in Sunday Stabroek on January 17, 2010, under the caption ‘Jagan and Rodney were not in competition and not opposed to each other.’

In that letter I said  very confidently that the (Sir) Hugh Hallett Electoral  Boundaries Commission related to the 1957 general elections in Guyana and that the statement quoted by me  as made by Dr Jagan and Mr Burnham  related to the 1957 general election.

I was quite  wrong  and apologise for this misdating of  things. Readers are entitled to see the error as more or less serious. I will have to accept their judgment.

The Hallett Commission was in fact appointed to fix constituency boundaries for the 1961 elections. Those for the 1957 elections were fixed and approved by the Colonial Office in consultation with Governor Renison. The statements by the two leaders were made in the heating atmosphere of 1961.

I am glad to acknowledge this correction as due to a phone call from my fellow villager, Mr Rampersaud Tiwari, a former cabinet level civil servant who placed Hallett in 1961 and not  1957. I was able at once to confirm his testimony. When I was writing Buxton-Friendship in Print and Memory, Mr Tiwari, as a son of that community, accepted my invitation to write the chapter on the Indian experience in Buxton. Mr Tiwari is not a source of any claim or statement in my recent letter.

The statements by the public figures which I repeated in my letter of January 17 were not made in secret, but were reported in the newspapers of that period.

One journalist still alive in an analysis later in the sixties took note of my statement on retaliation.

I suppose I came close to revisionism, but am glad to correct it.

Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana