Dear Editor,
Sometimes we tend to forget the people who struggled to make our country a better place to live. As a little boy about 12 years old, I worked with Mr Rahaman, who was butcher. After school I would go and cut grass for his cows and a donkey which used to pull a cart to sell beef on the road to people in the villages. At other times I would go with him to the slaughterhouse at Danielstown and work in his yard to look after his chickens; the money I got was to help me buy school books and clothes.
Every weekend in the ʼ60s I would notice Mr Isahak Basir riding his BSA motorcycle into the yard and parking it there. One day I asked him where he lived and why he was parking his motorcycle there. He told me that he lived at Jacklow in the Pomeroon river and he was the organizer for the PPP. He would attend meetings at Freedom House in Georgetown, and I remember him walking from house to house meeting and talking with people and making them members of his party; he was strong and big built.
He later joined me as a member of the PYO and I became active too in politics. Mr Isahak Basir was popular among the Amerindian people because of the way he acted and spoke; this was on account of the fact that he was also a farmer in the Pomeroon river. He experienced the same pains and suffering as they did, such as when the price for produce was low and sometimes had to be dumped at Charity. He later became a member of parliament with Dr Jagan of the PPP, and attended sittings in the National Assembly. I remember when he threw a loaf of bread at the Speaker when wheat flour was banned and bread was selling in the full view of the public at every corner.
Although he was forceful in his presentation and debate in parliament, he was loved by all members on both sides of the House. He took the mace up and gave Dr Jagan so he could speak after he was banned for a long time from speaking in parliament; he can be considered the most vibrant among the PPP MPs. He told me that Forbes Burnham had offered him the opportunity to cross the floor and join his party; he told him he would make him the minister of agriculture, but he refused. Comrade Basir was the shadow minister of agriculture in parliament from 1964 to 1991. After the PPP won the 1992 election, he told me that Cheddi had a hard time selecting his ministers, because everyone wanted to become a minister in the new government.
He decided to withdraw his name from the list, allowing Mr Reepu Daman Persaud to become the first minister of agriculture. He said that all the other comrades were power hungry as no one wanted to stand down.
He was the PPP candidate in 1973 for the Pomeroon electoral district, when the GDF soldiers pointed their guns at him in Charity government school and ordered him not to move. A crowd of about 200 people were there some distance away. At that moment we saw the ballot boxes being removed in the army truck which drove off abruptly to Red Lock airstrip. We later followed the truck after it spent some time at Charity rest house.
At Hampton Court, six soldiers held up Comrade Basir’s car at gunpoint and he was made to stand outside while his car was ripped open. Not a single one of us was allowed to travel with the ballot boxes.
At Anna Regina, the soldiers blocked the entrance of the station and no one was permitted to enter, be it agent or Basir who was the candidate; he was pushed out by the GDF soldiers when he demanded to have a look at the ballot boxes. He organized the biggest demonstration ever on the Essequibo Coast after the election was rigged in 1973, and was shot 4 times by a policeman at Adventure stelling. Isahak Basir, with the passionate persona of the politican-patriot, who, in his lifelong struggle never became a minister of the PPP government.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
