Dear Editor,
Permit a response to Samuel Hinds’ `Errant GECOM employees acted as prisoners of the country-view held by many Afro-Guyanese of the 1950s, we must turn the page’ (SN 6th Jan, 2021). Sam’s talk about truth and reconciliation is not new to society. Such talk has been bandied around for years, including during the period Hinds was both President and Prime Minister. It remains instructive that those who make these calls, having played leading roles in society, are not prepared to lead by example. For those persons such issues of import to a nation forever sitting on a tension keg is a smiling matter, a view I do not share.
Sam has an opportunity to be what he thinks the society should do or deserves by leading the way. He played pivotal roles in the nation’s management at the political and corporate levels and has some truth telling to do. He was identified as Prime Minister for the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) because, according to Cheddi Jagan, he would have been the bridge for Africans to benefit from the nation’s patrimony under that government. Let him present to the nation this score sheet.
Let him show this nation what he has done for the African community other than what many feel he was a mere rubber stamp, a window curtain to camouflage the PPP/C recrimination, marginalisation and atrocities. Let him give us the truth of his performance so we can move towards the reconciliation he is calling for.
To his concern about rigged elections and the stain to which he wants to ascribe solely to the African community, he needs not forget society is not blind to him being a direct beneficiary in the 2006 Election. It is no secret that for five years he sat in the National Assembly on the Region Ten votes of the Alliance for Change which were given to the PPP/C by GECOM Chief Election Officer Goocool Boodoo. He who calls himself a “proud Afro-Guyanese” should have declined to support the fraudulent assignment of a parliamentary seat, but he did not. In his proposal for truth and reconciliation, does Sam have a problem with this “errant GECOM employee [Goocool Boodoo]” whom he personally benefited from with a rigged assignment of votes (seat)? Or to him and those who supported or benefitted from this malpractice the act was not wrong, corrupted?
Sam should know in the repertoire of evidence of electoral rigging or fraud this is no smiling matter. Truth and reconciliation require speaking truth in all its warts and glories. None and nothing are exempted in the process, for reconciliation can never come with selective recount of history or good and bad solely determined because of who is the beneficiary,
committed the act or has been deprived.
Hinds and I worked in the bauxite community in Linden. He was head of the Research and Development Division. The company (GUYMINE), which was state-owned, gave him an open cheque and latitude to research and develop new products from bauxite. Let him come clean and admit to this nation that the money and opportunity were squandered. On his watch not one new product was developed. As a politician, but moreso an engineer Sam is not blind to the fundamentals that evidence must lead the way in determining truth and arriving at reconciliation.
Yours faithfully,
Lincoln Lewis
