Dear Editor,
I like to listen to or read great speeches. To me, Errol Walton Barrow of Barbados was a great speaker; Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham was a great speaker; Anthony ‘Tony’ Charles Lynton Blair of England is a great speaker; Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s acceptance speech when she won T&T’s prime ministership, was a great speech. Tafari ‘Haile Selassie’ Makonnen also gave a great speech in 1963 at the UN, in New York. It was then and there that he said, “Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned…until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all, without regards to race…the dream of lasting peace…will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.”
Barack Hussein Obama is a great speaker. One of Obama’s best speeches was the one he gave in 2008 when his mentor and Pastor, Dr Jeremiah Wright, put him in a very uncomfortable racial bind. Reverend Wright had suggested that the crumbling American economy and its social infrastructures were a result of the white man’s proverbial chickens coming home to roost. He said that the 911 attacks were as a result of God damning the “white man’s” America.
Obama, who is called black but is neither black nor white; he is both, had to get out of his comfort zone to speak directly to America’s racial issue and to right Dr Wright’s wrongs. No one has heard from the Reverend Wright since.
President Granger will have such a speech to make come Independence Day, next month. And he too will have to distance himself from the founders of this nation. It would take a very intellectually challenged and a grossly ethnically blinded person to not undeniably conclude that Guyana’s nemesis, our Achilles heel, is our racial problem. And one would have to be a complete negator of the truth to not also unambiguously admit that it was our founding fathers who have done this to us. And President Granger possesses what it takes to speak to this issue.
For 28 years of the PNC’s rule, Blacks in the majority, under their leader, did everything, legal and illegal (rigging is illegal), to keep the PNC in power. And for the 23 years of the PPP rule, Indians in the majority, under their leader, did everything, legal and illegal (corruption is illegal), to keep the PPP in power. And in both instances these behaviours were inimical to the development and prosperity of Guyana. Also, they were enacted at the expense of racial harmony in Guyana.
Then came 2015 and President Granger established the Ministry of Social Cohesion. It is obvious that Mr Granger has long harboured sentiments of a racially harmonious Guyana.
I would want to think that neither of the founding fathers would have thought to establish a ministry dedicated to fostering racial harmony in this divided nation. And this is sad, because they were the ones who created this racial mess!
Editor, what I would also like to think is that there are some former presidents and established politicians alive today, on both sides of the aisle, who would like to abandon this Social Cohesion Ministry if only because their desires and intentions are to keep this country racially divided and to perpetuate the evils of our founding fathers.
So now we are on the verge of our 50th anniversary as an independent nation. It should be noted that it is the 50th anniversary – any 50th anniversary – which connotes the ‘jubilee’ designation. And not that we in Guyana have anything much to be jubilant about. Indeed we have a sordid and vexing history of racial strife, protracted poverty, endemic and systemic white and blue collar crimes, political incestuousness and a general sense of a national blight.
Nonetheless, time and fate have pushed us to 50 years, and to President Granger and to the speech of his life.
And I await with nostalgic excitement the President’s speech. What will he say? Indeed, what can he say? He has to paint a picture that will revert to the behaviours and actions of our founding fathers. What will he say of them, or about them? How will he paint Dr Jagan? What will he say of the attorney, Burnham? He cannot talk nicely of one and nastily of the other. However, somewhere in this pivotal speech, he has to ask the listening nation to move away from the past that these two men have created. He has to ask us to reject the practice of apan jaat. He has to say to us that if Guyana is ever to move out of the doldrums of crime, poverty and infrastructural decay, and if we are ever to become the pride of the Caribbean and the envy of the world, we will have to stretch our patriotic hands across the racial divide and hug each other.
He will have to finally and publicly admit that the reason he set up a Social Cohesion Ministry is because he is determined to distance himself from the racial misdeeds of our founders and to right the wrongs of the past 50 years. Like Obama in his convention speech in 2004, President Granger has to say to this divided nation that there is no Indian Guyana, or Amerindian Guyana, or Black Guyana but that there is one Guyana; the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.
Editor, let me digress. I have been noticing the beautiful commemorative stickers but notice that they are mostly being displayed on black businesses and black people’s vehicles, or on black people’s homes and clothes. It is as if the 50th anniversary, inadvertently, will be a black people’s event. This is not President Granger’s fault. He has inherited this racial divide.
However, come May 26th , when he steps up to that podium in what will be the speech of his life, Mr Granger will have the single most available opportunity to distance himself from the racially divisive behaviours of our founding fathers. He will be given the platform to magnanimously woo this nation, to speak to our collective consciousness, and to chart a course forward for us.
Like President Obama, if ever there was one President who has the credibility to appeal to our sensibilities on racial inclusivity in this nation, it is Mr Granger.
Selassie continued in his speech by noting, “We must act while we can, while the occasion exists…lest time run out and resort be had to less happy days.” Editor, I anxiously await another great speech, this time from President David Arthur Granger.
Yours faithfully,
Wendell Jeffrey
