Dear Editor,
This is my fourth reply to the same number of letters from Aksharananda (‘Did Mr Ramjattan not see that it is possible to demand an apology from the PNC and at the same time work for the removal of the PPP?’ SN, May 10),
What is offensive in this latest letter by Aksharananda is that he commits the very moral lapses that he accuses Khemraj Ramjattan of. His letter is laced with examples which I will enumerate, but first a slight digression.
The PPP fears the loss of the election never anticipating that there would not be a three-way race. The PPP felt the three-party contest would have returned the plurality vote to them. The APNU+AFC coalition literally numbed the collective mind of the PPP. The election strategy then was to invoke the ghost of race to deny the coalition Indian votes.
I honestly believe armed with this strategy and with desperation setting in each day, different sections of the PPP leadership approached known Indian personalities who are not associated with political activism, for their public support. It is clear to all Guyanese that Varshni Singh and Nadira Jagan were solicited. I honestly believe Ravi Dev, the full-time consultant to the Guyana Times sought out his colleagues who initially were in ROAR and GIHA, and thus the letters of Ryhaan Shah and Aksharananda.
I return to Aksharananda’s letter. I can cite hundreds of people, all of whom are African-Guyanese who would like to see an apology from the PNC as an organization that once ruled Guyana, but they have contextualized their call to the PNC. They want a simultaneous intonation of ‘sorry’ by the PPP too. This is what Aksharananda would never concede because of his philosophical approach to race relations in Guyana.
Now for my enumeration. Quote 1: “For the wrongs done to Indians, we were first urged to forget and now we are asked to forgive, and unconditionally at that.”
It was Eusi Kwayana who brilliantly argued that in Guyanese history there is no guilty race. Aksharananda does not argue polemically employing a theoretical framework.
Almost all social scientists who have studied the use of state power in Guyana have concluded that power has been used to reward and punish ethnic groups. For Aksharananda, no wrongs have been done to Afro-Guyanese over the past twenty-two years.
Quote 2: “Yet, it is Mr Ramjattan who now accuses me of ‘generating present day hatreds,’ simply because I have rejected his call for historical amnesia on behalf of the PNC.”
But what about Aksharananda’s amnesia in relation to PPP’s atrocities?
Quote 3: “I also pleaded for reconciliation and restoration which I stated would be impossible without the truth, the very truth which Mr Ramjattan wants us to suppress in the name of political expediency.”
Aksharananda’s truths are not objective truths. Aksharananda’s truths do not include the fifteen years of the reign of Jagdeo and Ramotar. If anyone suppresses the truth it is Aksharananda.
Quote 4: “Instead he [Ramjattan] resorted to a sanctification of those collective historical misdeeds by simply leaving it up to the whim of the PNC to decide whether to apologise or not.”
This is where Aksharananda is mischievous and divisive. He refuses to look at historical misdeeds in the context of power and race. I guess we must not leave it up to the PNC to apologize, we must demand that they do while we give the PPP a blank cheque.
Quote 5: “It is not so much a question of PNC’s apology anymore but Mr Ramjattan’s think process that intrigues me.”
The thought process of Aksharananda is on display for all Guyanese to see. Certainly for a man who uses the status of a swami and writes such race-based statements, his thought process must intrigue every Guyanese who wants to see political and ethnic reconciliation.
Quote 6: “There have been extremely vociferous and passionate calls, and rightly so, for accountability from the PPP.”
Aksharananda doesn’t tell us who made such calls and why he isn’t among the callers. Note must be taken of Aksharananda’s use of words. Like Ryhaan Shah, harsh words are avoided in describing PPP mistakes. Shah uses “arrogance.” Aksharannda uses “accountability.” Both avoid terms like, “violent,” “depraved,” “dictatorial,” “authoritarian,” etc.
Quote 7: “But the PNC has admitted to doing no wrong. Does it not therefore smack of supreme arrogance and condescension?”
Has the PPP admitted to any form of wrongdoing? And its record is far more atrocious than that of the PNC. In a previous letter Aksharananda remembers the murder of Rodney but conveniently forgets the murder of Waddell and Crum-Ewing. But such is the nature of the man whose thought process is now laid bare for all to see.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
