Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter from Head of the Presidential Secretariat and Cabinet Secretary Roger Luncheon in yesterday’s SN captioned ‘The Government of Guyana was not consulted on the USAID project.’
Dr Luncheon wrote: “The project was conceived by the American authorities. The project was funded by the US Congress. A bid was tendered, the US organisation, International Republican Institute, won that bid and was awarded the contract to implement the project.”
I always wanted to know the genesis of this project. Now I know.
In the last 15 years or so I have published scores of letters arguing that Guyana is not a real democracy. The following two encounters explained it well. In 1990 I ran into a Washington Post reporter who had just returned from Suriname and Guyana. He said that the Western ambassadors in Georgetown told him you could not have democracy in a country where “every last man votes race.” Asked to explain further, he said when one ethnic group has a numerical majority, that group will always win, and it becomes a sort of dictatorship. I also recall another memorable statement from him: “All the elections there have been grudge matches between the Blacks and the Indians.”
Also in May 1990 I was interviewed by a BBC reporter, Hugh Crosskill on the telephone from London to explain my group’s fast and vigil outside the United Nations in New York. After the recorded interview was over, Crosskill called me back from his London office to talk off the record. He told me that what we were really doing was trying to replace a black government with
an Indian one. (Crosskill was shot and killed in Jamaica in June 2002.)
Now, 21 years later, I can only say that both the Washington Post and Croskill were absolutely prescient. We need to find ways to institute genuine democracy in Guyana, not do another replacement job and replace an Indian government with and African one. If this is going to be the outcome of the USAID project, there will be friction.
I support this project if it will place pressure on both ethnic parties to transform themselves into genuine non-racial parties, and if there is a reasonable chance that a significant pool of swing voters comprising both Africans and Indians will develop in this multiracial society. The baton of power must pass to a new government every two or three election cycles.
I would urge the US government to take out full page ads in the Guyana independent press to explain the project to the public. Win over their support. The US government helped a great deal to throw out the dictatorship in 1992. The US government has lots of credibility and trust
from both ethnic groups, and without a doubt they have the capacity to help this nation change its voting culture and also develop genuine democratic institutions and practices.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
