Dear Editor,
Even as I send sincere wishes that you and this esteemed newspaper experience a healthy, productive and progressive 2021, I wonder why my first New Year’s letter must deal with such “dark issues”(?) indicated above.
I suspect that – like murders, spousal abuse and weekly traffic fatalities – both reality and what’s left of the “political animal” in me, beckon.
Because I once experienced, first–hand, how political parties can propagandize using frequency of sustained distortions and misusing information to sow discontent, distraction and utter national political mischief, I must question the current opposition over evidential detail regarding the issues in this letter.
Today’s incarnation of the Brigadier’s People’s National Congress (PNC), its surrogates, rabble-rousers and propagandists have all tried to foist figures – ranging from 3000 to 4000 – as a total number of Afro Guyanese youth wantonly murdered by extra–judicial “hit-men” agents supported by the Jagdeo-Ramotar regimes. Three/four thousand!? Names, dates, circumstances were never detailed by the PNC leaders who imposed those numbers on the psyche of some. Even if a few hundred of their very few loyal die-hards willingly accept(ed) those figures, some lasting racist damage would have been introduced. What low-down price “victory”? even “support”?
This newspaper, editor you are best placed to recall, was diligent and exhaustive in researching all inexplicable and/or suspicious deaths over the period after the jail-break convicts established “headquarters” in Buxton ECD. The PNC had claimed that rogue security forces along with hired professional guns were eliminating not only the jail-break murderers but “innocent” Afro-Guyanese youngsters who might have merely snatched a cellular phone or supported the PNC.
Stabroek News, after months of pain-staking research, could identify around 240 deaths – some questionable, many verifiable under lawful circumstances. Of course the accuser – PNC never “assisted” this paper to justify their claims of thousands.
Now after the first five months (Aug-Dec) of the new PPP government, the Brigadier has empowered the APNU Colonel to announce that 1000+ Afro-Guyanese have been summarily dismissed from their government or para-statal employment for no valid or justifiable reasons. Except the partisan political. The alleged blatant bread-and-butter discrimination works out at 200 per month so far. Obviously evidence has to be documented to prove these allegations. The PPP has been that “busy”?
A full-page advertisement recently highlighted 30 Afro-Guyanese allegedly terminated for no industrial reason. Again even that list (of photographs captioned) contained persons not dismissed but transferred. Thirty is far removed from 1000.
Now the five-month PPP administration has already managed to alienate even me with certain high-level terminations. It’s already obvious that certain dismissals were of a political nature rather than professional or industrial. But 30 is nowhere near 1000 even though one discriminatory dismissal is unacceptable because the public service does not belong to the PPP.
The accuser-opposition must now activate the mechanism it announced that would investigate wrongful political dismissals. Attorneys and trade union leaders must take up every case.
I need to be convinced about the 3000/4000 deaths and the 1000 dismissals. Who can convince me?
Yours faithfully,
Allan Arthur
Fenty