Dear Editor,
If I am not dreaming, I noted that the President of neighbouring Suriname, has paid us an official visit and has had deep conversations with our own President of Guyana. Is this the same Guyana, our Guyana, whose government pursued and persecuted Dr Janette Bulkan in 2009, at the time a member of the Technical Advisory Panel convened by the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to review the R-PP submissions of the Government of Suriname?
Did they mount this persecution because she allegedly, as a World Bank contractor, did not protest the issue of a Suriname map with part of Guyana shown as Surinamese territory that was displayed at a World Bank meeting in October 2009 at which she was not even present?
Is this the same government which raised hellfire and demanded her removal from that consultancy with the World Bank? And did not the GOG succeed in having her removed?
Is the international citizen, the World Bank, still there?
The visit of President Bouterse to Guyana and his accommodation by President Jagdeo and government is probably a way of announcing that the map in question has now been redrawn in a way acceptable to the Guyana side. Citizens are at a loss without information..
In my opinion, the visit should not have taken place without a statement by the Government of Guyana on the disputed map showing the New River Triangle as part of Suriname. There was no such statement. Are we seen as having no memories, but straw or dust in our head pieces?
So if it was the duty of Dr Bulkan to protest and stamp her way out in protest over the map, even at a meeting at which she was not present, how is it that the government which successfully persecuted her for that felonious failure can now sit and confer without protest, formality, or without at least properly accounting to the people for the planned misconduct. It appears that the government stands in violation of its own vital principle, so mandatory that a mere allegation that Dr Bulkan did not observe caused her to be dismissed as an expert.
In my opinion this act of President Jagdeo’s government is the most brazen and high-handed example of assumed privilege, contempt, disrespect and embraced inequality to come to light in the hemisphere. It is the same assumed privilege that caused the President’s marriage by a marriage officer of a major faith not to be registered.
There is a long list of individuals of all classes and races punished by torture, physical and mental, denial of promotion, denial of process and other slick means queuing up for redress. But the Champion of the Earth cannot be bothered with such petty, domestic grievances involving his own long reign.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana