Dear Editor,
The suggestion by President Granger for the renaming of the Ogle Airport as the Eugene Correia International Airport has had some unintended consequences: accusations by nine of the ten aircraft operators at Ogle of unfair practices by the Correia group in its control of Ogle Airport Inc (OAI); comparisons drawn between OAI and the Berbice Bridge Company Inc; calls for placing the Airport under the Public Utilities Commission; an exchange between two correspondents to the letter columns in the media, Mr. Kamal Ramkarran and Mr. John Willems.
On the issue of the conduct of the Correia Group in relation to OAI, I was retained in 2013 by Air Services Limited, the owner of about 50% of the aircraft operating out of Ogle to carry out a partial scope review of OAI. It appears from the recent allegations by two of the operators, including ASL, that the governance concerns identified by that review have not been addressed to the satisfaction of the minority shareholders of OAI, or indeed to the operators at Ogle.
Now for the name change. If the announcement by President Granger was intended to be a mere suggestion then he ought to have said so and moved to consult with relevant stakeholders. If, on the other hand, it was a statement of intent as the Correia Group interpreted it, then the President would be acting in violation of democratic norms.
Mr. Ramkarran’s instructive comment about Correia vs. Kwayana was made more pointed by Mr. Willems’ inadvertent admission that Mr. Eugene Correia was part of the clique put in place by the British Government after they overthrew the democratically elected Government led by Jagan and Burnham in 1953.
With such participation in an unconstitutional act, Eugene Correia would have had to accomplish not mere compensatory achievements but some extraordinary successes to warrant the country’s second largest airport to carry his name into posterity. By Mr. Willems’ account, Mr. Correia’s main claim to fame is that he was knowledgeable about Guyana’s interior, while his memorable achievements were some successful and some failed entrepreneurial efforts.
Mr. Willems does Eugene Correia even less favour by associating him with the events around February 16, 1962 involving riots, arson, looting and losses of life and property in Georgetown, as documented in the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the disturbances in British Guiana in February 1962 (the Wynn-Parry Report). Mr. Willems claims that Correia, Burnham and D’Aguiar were the three leaders of the three-pronged demonstration to Parliament.
I have found no mention of the name Eugene Correia in the Wynn-Parry report, which includes the names not only of the primary actors involved in those events but the supporting cast as well. The political persons from the UF who are named are Peter D’Aguiar who in paragraph 77 is reported as telling the Commission that he “intended to use every means of bringing down the (Jagan) government” and with whose credibility the Commission had more than a little problem; Ms. Ann Jardim who was prominent in the “oppose, expose and depose” campaign against the government and who is described in paragraph 91 as a leader of the crowd to the Parade Ground; and Kit Nascimento who the Commission described as taking up “a very forceful attitude” as Personal Assistant to Peter D’Aguiar and General Manager of the Daily Chronicle, considered the “unashamed and remorseless protagonist of U.F.” (Para 80).
Significantly, Mr. Willems did not name a single achievement of Eugene Correia in aviation while serving as a Minister responsible for the sector. With the minute details and anecdotes offered by Willems, one wonders whether there was, let alone one deserving of significant national recognition.
Yet, if President Granger remains convinced that Eugene Correia deserves recognition, then the system of national award, even posthumously, is more than adequate. Let Ogle remain Ogle and let us not repeat the error of the Timehri Airport.
I am extremely uncomfortable with the suggestion that the Executive can choose to rename places without any consultation or on pure political grounds. As a historian, President Granger will recognise that that can easily fall into the rewriting of history.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
