Dear Editor,
Early in the year 1996, the fifth year of the “return to democracy,” some Trinidad and Tobago academics invited me to give a public talk at St Augustine on ‘Race and Politics in Guyana.’ The air was thick with reports of what was going on in Guyana. I reviewed the situation and gave as factual a report as I could. My position was well known as against the PPP, but not against the PPP government and its claim to legitimacy.
At question time there was a direct question from the floor as to whether the government had launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing. I denied the report, and my answer appeared in the Trinidad Express of July 3, 1996, ‘Kwayana: No Ethnic cleansing in Guyana.’ Regarding race as I do as a serious problem I have not been an alarmist. I want my testimony to be taken seriously. .
I discussed openly my differences with the new President Dr Jagan over the years. No one in this world or the next can claim that I ever at any time asked any government for a post. I did say that the PPP has been out of power for over two decades and that it was rapidly trying to put its people in key positions. I knew some saw that as ethnic cleansing. But for me such a charge was a very serious one, so I simply described what was being done. I say this because I want it to be clear that even though I was opposed to the PPP government, today I would not think of attacking it knowing my attack to be unfair or overstated. Such attacks are short sighted and even counter- productive, that is, they result in what is not desired.
So there it was. I placed my reputation as a public commentator on the line to avoid an unjust attack against the new PPP government.
I do not at all regret my answers then. It has put me in a strong position. All that goes before is to clear the way for a considered opinion about where the PPP government is now. I have never worried about the PPP/Civic. The Civic form has always been a fiction. WPA argued years ago in writing that the Civic had never put any position to the public in any kind of bulletin and was therefore in no way separate from the public point of view. Dr Jeffrey’s revelations on this point were only proof of what had been pointed out.
The fact that Dr Jagan could look the country in the eye and call his government a coalition shows that long after Eastern European forms of state had collapsed, their attraction remained acceptable to some of their admirers.
And for the benefit of some talented and over confident but also ignorant analysis, a guilty party does not mean a guilty race. If it did, then when I deemed the PNC guilty of electoral theft I would also be condemning the race it broadly represents as a guilty race. But the new type of analyst delights in one-sidedness. They ignore years of public activity and play games with words trying to read the atmosphere of half a century ago from how things strike them today as they write.
To borrow from my biographer, it is their speech act.
The repression of Critchlow Labour College is a serious cultural assault on the working people of all sectors, first and foremost. Is it not Critchlow whom the Indian workers smarting under the indenture handcuffs called “Black Crosby”? They do not replace it with an Ayube Edun-Critchlow School, or try to make a cultural pantheon of labour figures, combining the two, but they support a GAWU school. They import sectarianism into the working class. They did not branch out the Critchlow Labour College that rural people in some regions that might have lacked access to it could attend. No, they introduced a sectarian labour school to unite the working class! As Critchlow College is swept aside here is what the Cipriani Labour College (Trinidad and Tobago) is boasting on its current website:
The College is a tertiary level institution that offers full and part time programmes at the Certificate, Diploma, Associate and Bachelor’s Degree levels.
They used to be sister Labour schools. For ‘higher’ and unstated reasons, the PPP has crushed one of Labour’s chief gains out of the Cold War and lynched Critchlow Labour College, showing itself a bungler in matters of political culture.
The present ruling party and its Civic dummies have an ethnic policy. It is verified in the statement in the editorial of the Guyana Chronicle of August 1, 2007, blatantly based on racial numbers and electoral behaviour.
It does not outlaw or discourage relations of inequality, such as between political overseers and those on the payroll. Across ethnic lines. From all reports these associations do not lead to even the kind of fake marriage modelled by the President but remain rooted in inequality and indignity. They may even think that they are being progressive! Jan Carew who in days before the PPP was the first scholarship student to Eastern Europe from Guyana, with a recommendation from Dr Jagan and with Paul Robeson as a reserve reference, has long warned that racial problems are not solved in bed.
The issue of the 57 bauxite workers has exposed the farcical position of the Minister of Labour, who must now ask himself whether he is a coalition partner or a handyman of the regime. The whole episode undermines his position. It seems he has lost individual responsibility and is subject only to the centralist collective will of the cabinet. Yet the Minister is charged with responsibility. A court will normally take notice of his instruments.
The incidents mentioned in the union’s recent statement, ranging from the unfortunate industrial death of a worker in the course of his employment and while travelling on a company vehicle, to the strange conduct of the Chief Labour Officer and the presence of roaches in a company kitchen, the alleged denial of the eight-hour day to bauxite workers show an industrial squalor of the type fiercely exposed by Cheddi Jagan in the colonial legislature. The fact is that all of these abuses from Critchlow Labour College to the 57 bauxite workers are acts of extreme provocation, without arms but reckless and violent in effect, and add nothing whatever to the general welfare, meant in banana republic style to bring people to their knees.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
