Dear Editor,
Persons must resist the new brazen attempt by the Jagdeo/Ali People’s Progressive Party (PPP) regime to entrench its contempt for the right of the African man, woman and child to be treated with respect and dignity.
For more than three decades Emancipation celebration in Georgetown was organised and hosted by the African Cultural Development Association (ACDA). This institution, by the work it has done to keep the event alive, has asserted its role and carved out a niche in our society. ACDA must be allowed to continue to host the event unimpeded, free of partisan political intrusion and threat to keeping Africans’ history alive, as told by them not instigated and propagated by agents whose masters (bosses) do not have African Guyanese interest at heart.
One needs to look no further than to the daily political maneuverings of how the PPP treats African Guyanese. Elected political representatives are denied the opportunity to participate in meaningful political decision-making as much as the Constitution mandates “inclusionary democracy.”
Independent organisations led by African leaders are denied national participation and excluded from the national patrimony. African Guyanese are now reduced to securing government contracts only to clean drains and build small bridges, whilst the hog of money allocated for infrastructural development goes to the PPP and its cohorts. The African Guyanese the PPP tolerates must accept a subjugated role; the evidence abounds. I digress to make the point.
In the immediate post 1992 era when the PPP was moving to downplay national events like Mashramani, celebrated to mark Republican status, and Emancipation to mark the end of slavery, the Opposition (People’s National Congress-PNC) fought for Mashramani to remain on the national calendar. ACDA moved in to preserve and deepen the legacy of the Emancipation struggle and attainment with a one-day celebration at the National Park on August 1st. The fact remains were it not for these acts of resistance the two major events would have been reduced to a murmur or relegated to the history books.
The PPP is preoccupied with seeking to mask its discriminatory management of the state, particularly in the case of Africans. The PPP is fooling no one in the absence of meaningful policies and programmes, guided by international conventions, time honoured principles, the Constitution and Laws of Guyana. Moving to hijack and undermine the Emancipation event hosted by ACDA is not evidence of racial respect but continuing the violation of Africans’ rights, which include the right to articulate and give expression to their realities – past, present and future.
Creating and facilitating the Association of People of African Descent (APDA) to undermine organisations like the International Decade for People of African Descent Assembly – Guyana (IDPADA-G), now ACDA, reinforces the point the PPP’s policy is that of divide to rule and its leaders thrive in an environment pitting individuals and groups against each other, whilst using taxpayers’ money on the group they are instigating to create the conflict.
APDA, this PPP-front group, does not advance the real interest of the African community but rather masquerades and fronts the regime’s continuous oppression of the race. Such actions are not unlike what we read of the house slaves nor the Willie Lynch’s Letter to sustain Jim Crow era in the United States. We must not accept this in 21st century Guyana. We must not allow the PPP to continue denying African Guyanese their basic rights to freedom of association and representation by choice.
Shame on those Africans in ADPA who have willingly allowed themselves to be purveyors of division and enablers of the violation of your fellow man, woman and child. These are spineless behaviours and I ask: how could you look at yourselves in the mirror and say you are leading Africans when in fact you are being used to execute the task to lead Africans into subjugation. You bring agony, not pride to the proud legacy of your ancestors who fought for human dignity and respect. And least it be forgotten, the oppressed instinctively fight their oppressors and in most instances the first to feel the justified wrath are the front-line enablers.
Sincerely,
Lincoln Lewis
