The urge by those who rule over us to curb freedom of speech can find expression in insidious ways, and is not always enunciated in explicit fashion by the General Secretary of the PPP in the course of his press briefings. The latest frontier in the struggle for freedom of speech in this country relates to a community which most coastlanders have no knowledge of at all. Yet the principle that has been raised there is a general principle, and in this instance has particular relevance for Guyana’s third largest ethnic group.
While the citizens of the coastal strip might have little awareness of Aishalton, which is situated in the Deep South Rupununi, many of them by now will nevertheless have heard about the infamous slapping incident which took place there. As part of his grand electioneering sweep of indigenous villages in the south of the country last year, President Donald Ramotar had rocketed into Aishalton on December 3, to dazzle the locals with his political insights. At the meeting which he subsequently addressed, it became clear that not everyone present was disposed to be dazzled, and one resident in particular stood out for his heckling.
This was mathematics teacher Mr John Adams, who appeared to have hit a raw nerve when one of his uninvited comments mentioned former president, Mr Bharrat Jagdeo. On a recording of the President’s remarks at Aishalton that surfaced some 27 days after the incident, Mr Ramotar can be heard telling someone in the audience that the man knows nothing about Jagdeo, and if the latter had been present “he might have slap yuh ’cause yuh stupid.” Mr Adams has indicated that he was the one to whom the Head of State was responding, while for his part the President did not deny outright that it was his voice on the tape. As for the Office of the President, it confined itself to releasing a statement saying that the tape’s contents would have to be authenticated.
As it was, Mr Adams really was slapped for his heckling – by a member of the Presidential Guard who told him he was being disrespectful to President Ramotar. When approached by this newspaper, Head of the Presidential Guard Rohan Singh was quite adamant that the incident had never occurred and accused Mr Adams in so many words of being drunk and disorderly at the meeting. In our edition last Thursday, however, Mr Singh would have found the ground cut from underneath his feet, when we published the contents of a letter sent to the Teaching Service Commission by the Aishalton Village Council – which is no friend of Mr Adams – effectively confirming that he had been slapped.
The public perception is that if you cross the ruling party and/or the government, you will be penalized for it. It came as no great surprise for politics-hardened coastal citizens, therefore, to learn that a petition had been launched in Aishalton to have Mr Adams expelled from the community because he had “shamed” the village, and (as mentioned above) that the Village Council had written the TSC requesting that he be transferred from the Aishalton Secondary School.
Aishalton Councillor Regis James said that it was not the first time that the village had had a problem with Mr Adams, since the man had been part of a protest some time ago which as a school teacher he should not have been, and he appeared particularly concerned that the teacher had “put our village in the media.” The petition also accuses Mr Adams of being “under the influence of alcohol” and having a beer bottle in his hand during the meeting, and more seriously, of transgressions at the school where he teaches, allegations which were echoed by the council. The petitioners also made an issue of the fact that he did not come from Aishalton, but from Region 7.
The first thing to be said is that Mr Adams’ alleged breaches of the education code at the school cannot be tacked on to the complaints about his behaviour at President Ramotar’s meeting to provide an excuse to expel him from the village. The two issues are quite separate, and there is no basis for the council taking action on the second. Where the first is concerned, it is of a different order and would have to be pursued at another level. As it is, the Guyana Times last week published information saying the complaints of misbehaviour at the school were reported to the TSC in 2011; if so, it is even less acceptable to resurrect them now in an unrelated context to get him out of the village. This is not to say that if there is an ongoing problem the complaints should not be investigated; on the contrary they should be, and if found to have substance appropriate action should follow, but as said already, that is something entirely apart from the heckling matter.
Mr Regis James is wrong, of course; it is not Mr Adams who put Aishalton in the media, it was the Presidential Guard who slapped him who did so, and by extension the President who spoke to him as if to a minor. Furthermore, teachers are also citizens of this land and have the same right to protest as others do. Georgetown, for example, has been no stranger to protesting teachers in the past. It was former Toshao Tony James, however, who described the petitioners’ implied suggestion that Mr Adams should not be in Aishalton because he originated from Region 7, as “discriminatory.” He is right, and as a publicly expressed view it would have been found quite unacceptable on the coast.
It was already noted in an earlier editorial on this subject that heckling at political meetings – and even in the National Assembly – is a long-established tradition on the coast, inherited, perhaps, from the British, who have never shown themselves inhibited when attending the meetings of their politicians. The point bears repeating: heckling, even when the President is speaking, cannot be grounds for eviction from a village. In addition, as also mentioned in a previous editorial, while Mr Adams may have had a beer bottle in his hand at the gathering, he was clear and coherent when he spoke to this newspaper the same evening.
Mr Tony James told this newspaper that the people who made the decision to send a petition about Mr Adams were, “Party supporters and encouraged by a high regional official who was there.” He also said that the PPP coordinator who spoke on the issue had a longstanding problem with Mr Adams, and he described it as “entirely a personal vendetta they have against this man.”
So here we have the PPP employing all the resources at its disposal to ensure the silencing of dissonant voices in the Amerindian areas. The indigenous inhabitants are treated like children – when they speak out against a previous president they are told they are “stupid” and would be slapped by that former official were he present, and let’s face it, slapping is what you do to naughty children, not to adults. Then perhaps taking his cue from Mr Ramotar, or perhaps on his own initiative, a Presidential Guard actually does slap Mr Adams, underlining the perception he obviously had that the victim was like a ‘naughty child.’
Since slapping has failed to achieve its end, and the ruling party can no longer claim that it did not take place, it has now moved into full intimidation mode, with supporters drawing up petitions with encouragement from a “high regional official,” and a complaisant village council seeking the removal of Mr Adams from Aishalton. Perhaps the most revealing comments, however, came from Aishalton Toshao Bernard Conrad, who must have had a few coastlanders spluttering in their morning coffee when he was quoted by this newspaper as saying: “You expect someone to respect the daddy and His Excellency is the daddy of the country. Adams is wrong. He is not put to judge any man on the earth. He must be like us; he must respect the Toshao, he must respect elders.”
“Daddy of the country”? One can only think that someone in Freedom House has been dusting off their copy of the Juche idea, and seized upon the designation ‘Father of the People’ held by three generations of Kims, as possessing the potential for application in our hinterland. Clearly, someone needs to explain to the village council that we do not live in North Korea, and President Ramotar is an elected official who is accountable to those who elected him. He is not a surrogate father, and he is obliged – as is the government he heads – to allow the expression of dissenting views; that is what democracy is all about. Similarly, the council itself, while entitled to respect, is not entitled to impose its viewpoint on everyone else, however much it may disagree with its critics.
The foundation of democracy is freedom of expression, and Amerindians have as much right to that as everyone else in this country. It would appear that according to Mr Tony James not everyone in Aishalton was in agreement with the petitioners or with the council on the matter of Mr Adams. For his part Mr Tony James himself was clearly not cowed by the party machine into silence: “Is it we who are embarrassing or is [it] the President who embarrass us?” he said. It is a legitimate question and he has a democratic right to ask it.
