Dear Editor,
Stabroek News reported on August 18 that former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his wife, Cherie Blair, are to visit Guyana during this week. The visit is ostensibly to promote the work of The Cherie Blair Foundation which aims to help women in business and has already done work in Guyana. No doubt the visit will give Mr. Blair the opportunity to learn more about Guyana and its new-found oil wealth and to confer with high officials. He would have met Vice President Jagdeo in the past when the VP was President. Mr. Blair advises businesses and governments and Guyana is a hot, new, entrant on the market for business opportunities. Guyana’s regional importance will also expand.
The Labour Party, which Mr. Blair led to three unprecedented electoral victories, had once been a friend of Guyana. It criticized the suspension of the constitution in 1953 by the Conservative government and welcomed the leaders of the united PPP, Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, facilitating them opportunities to present their case to the British public. When in 1963 another Conservative government postponed Guyana’s Independence and by a sleight of hand, imposed proportional representation for the sole purpose of removing the PPP government from office on the dictates of the US government, the Labour Party was again heavily critical of the decision. Harold Wilson, then leader of the Labour Party referred to it as a “fiddled constitutional arrangement.” When the Labour Party was elected shortly after in 1964, the new government, as a subservient cohort of the US, refused to set aside the decision and allowed the PNC-UF coalition to take office, leading to over two decades of dictatorship and untold harm to Guyana.
Mr. Blair bears no direct responsibility for those events which are in the past. But that past is very much part of the present in Guyana. Would Mr. Blair, of his own volition, acknowledge the Labour Party’s 1964 perfidy to Guyana and, if not, would a courageous journalist invite him to do so if he holds a press conference?
Yours faithfully,
Ralph Ramkarran
