Dear Editor,
In your lamentation of the predicament of the Mocha squatters in your Jan. 6/23 editorial `Mocha confrontation’, you declared, “Politics enters into the story because the squatters are African, and the government is Indian, and the opposition has now taken up their case.”
This sentence is a subtle statement that reeked of innuendos. The SN editor has a moral responsibility to unpack that statement as it could be a dangerous asseveration.
The editorial pits one group, African, against another entity, the government, which it claims is “Indian”; the editor needs to explain why he or she has deemed the government “Indian”. That loaded statement says one of several things:
(1) Only Indians voted for the PPP. That cannot be true because Indians accounted only for 40% of the population (according to the last official census).
(2) The government leadership is only Indian. That is not true; less than half of President Irfaan Ali’s cabinet is Indian!
(3) The Ministers dealing with the squatter situation (Collin Croal, Minister of Housing and Water) and (Bishop Juan Edghill, Minister of Public Works) are Indian. Again, not valid; both of these ministers are of African descent.
(4) The PPP has removed these squatters only because they are African. There is absolutely no reason to believe this line!
Editor, some explanation is necessary. When you reply, it might be helpful to know if “the opposition” is Amerindian, African or Chinese or of some other ethnic group. Otherwise, your respectable paper could be guilty of stoking racial fires in a volatile situation!
Yours truly,
Dr. Devanand Bhagwan
Editor-in-Chief’s note: The editorial does not pit one group against the other. The description “Indian” relates to the source of the majority of support for the government.
