Kaieteur News
PAGE 04
Friday May 26, 2017
Kaieteur News Printed and Published by National Media & Publishing Company Ltd. 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown, Georgetown, Guyana. Publisher: GLENN LALL Editor: Adam Harris Tel: 225-8465, 225-8491. Fax: 225-8473, 226-8210
EDITORIAL Moving beyond divisions
Editor’s Note; If your sent letter was not published and you felt its contents were valid and devoid of libel or personal attacks, please contact us by phone or email.
Freddie Kissoon’s good column spoilt by a terrible lapse Dear Editor, I write to offer a few comments on Freddie Kissoon’s article –”The unbelievable country in 21 century”, which was published in Kaieteur News on May 23, 2017. The focus of Kissoon’s letter was the operationalizing of the Georgetown City Council. At the outset I wish to state that except for Freddie’s comparison of the functioning of the incumbent Council with the previous one – which I disagree with – I believe he has made a fair assessment of the situation. Editor, if truth be known, I agonized over writing this letter after having agreed with most of what Kissoon wrote. My difficulty is that I don’t want to appear as being mean spirited for criticizing my comrade and friend, Freddie, for what some may say was a minor lapse on his part. I however felt that it was very important for me to differentiate between what appears to be ‘minor lapses’whether intended or otherwise – with my perception of an emerging trend by persons engaged in criticizing governance st
Today, our nation is fifty-one years old. As nations go, we are a mere stripling when one thinks of the several millennia that, say, China and India have endured as coherent entities. But young as we are, it does not, and indeed, should not prevent our citizens from wanting to live the “good life”. After all, some would ask, “What does age have to do with it?” as they point out that most of the models of the “good life” are so much less ancient than the two cited behemoths that have only relatively recently begun to progress. So the question arises as to what exactly has prevented us from fulfilling the dreams we entertained when we finally became independent from Britain? Britain, we were told, had systematically exploited us for over a hundred and fifty years – not to mention the Dutch for the previous two hundred years. Once they had departed, and we were left to enjoy our own riches, happy days would be here to stay. One fly in the ointment, we should now concede, was the context in which the British departed. The “best and brightest” US administration of John F. Kennedy decided – over the protestations of the British – that Cheddi Jagan was a communist “fellow traveller” who would create another Cuba in the western hemisphere. Determined not to be tagged “soft on communism” in domestic politics after the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy bought British support for a CIA -sponsored operation to oust Jagan. The violence that the CIA destabilisation programme inspired against the PPP government took an inevitable racial orientation because of the nature of our domestic politics. While there had been historical competition between the several groups introduced into our country to labour on the sugar plantations that had on occasion broken out into violence, the CIA-inspired violence was different. It was different because it introduced violence as a political tool to capture the state and altered the political dynamics of our country with deleterious effects that has persisted into the present. Up to the time of the CIA’s intervention, Forbes Burnham’s PNC had accepted granting of Independence to Guyana under the PPP that had been victorious at the 1961 elections. It is very likely that for that introduction of violence and its rendering of our society, our politics and our development could have progressed more along the lines of Trinidad and Tobago that has a similar population-mix as ours. We may not have had oil all those years, but we certainly had other resources and the educated manpower to develop them. We are positing that the bitterness engendered by racial violence in the sixties reverberated in political violence at times, and has served to prevent us from fulfilling the promises of Independence. This is not to say that other impediments such as “neocolonial” relations, “underdevelopment”, and strategic policies of our governments or developmental models have not played their part. In matters of human development, whether at the individual or group level, causality is never singular. What we are asserting is that our persistent societal divisions have conspired to prevent us from even giving ourselves a chance to confront those other obstacles – and becoming really Independent. While as a nation we may be young, individuals who were adults at the time of Independence are a fast disappearing breed. It is a great human tragedy that most of them have passed on without fulfilling the dreams they had in 1966. It would be an even greater tragedy, however, if we allow another generation to grow old and wither unfulfilled on the vine. The humiliations of our citizens at various ports of entry in foreign lands should inspire us to get our act together. This means moving beyond the violent divisions of our society, fostered by outsiders, and acting together to build our “good society”, right here. Happy Independence to all Guyanese.
measures under the APNU+AFC coalition government, who demonstrate they have short memories when they narrate the development of events under the PPP regime, be it at the central, regional or local government levels. In operating this way the objectivity of the analysis engaged in this practice often suffer. In his letter Kissoon wrote, “…Mayor and City Council has not brought a superior form of municipal democracy. On the contrary, the PPP dominated council had fewer authoritarian traits”. He asked, “How does one explain this?” And he goes on to offer for this, which is not an issue I wish to address in this letter, since my concern at this juncture is with the premise he used that led to his explanation. Kissoon in his letter committed the grievous error of equating the quality of democracy in the present Georgetown City Council with the previous council. In doing so he ignored some of the important developments within the Council which led to the decline of Georgetown during the administration of
the PPP government. The present council is an elected body with less than two years’ experience, whereas the previous council was one that was in place for more than 16 years and had long out lived its democratic mandate. It was allowed to function to give the PPP more political control of city governance than it would have been able to command in democratic elections. Major decisions of the council were in the main, ignored. Developmental projects were only implemented if they had the blessings of the ruling party or, were initiated by the ruling party on conditions which it determined. In the municipality of Georgetown and other local government areas citizens experienced the suspension of local governance democracy for more than a decade and a half. Imposed in its place was the dictatorship of the Minister of Local Government. A non-elected body under the domination of a party and government that is the minority in the council can’t be used to measure
democracy as against an elected one. If Kissoon had said the elected council has not brought a superior form of municipal democracy. I would have agreed with him not because I believe in the accuracy of the statement but because I see it as in keeping with the implicit spirit of the criticism i.e. of demanding better from those in control of City Hall. Kissoon and I parted company when he said, “On the contrary, the PPP dominated council had fewer authoritarian traits”. I was forced to ask myself which country is my friend and comrade speaking of, or was it a tongue in cheek statement by him? I don’t think that I need to list here for anybody’s benefit, examples of the antidemocratic practice of the council and the extent to which democracy in the Council was undermined by the Minister of local government and the acting Town-Clerk when the PPP was in office as evidence to justify my rejection of Kissoon’s contention on this matter. Tacuma Ogunseye
“Throwing dead cats across the fence at each other” Dear Editor, I refer to the last paragraph of my letter in KN, of Thursday, May 25 captioned, “East Indian Immigration and the Second Slavery,” The paragraph stated; “As we mark one hundred years since the end of indenture, we need to pay renewed attention to the structure of social and economic relations that gave birth to the continuation and expansion of indentured immigration between 1848 and 1917. I use this periodization because it is my belief that we need to pay more attention to the factors that led to the imposition of the draconian indentured contract after 1848. We must consider the context. This is especially necessary since many of our communities continue to suffer from the vestiges of the demand for cheap labor, the original reason for slavery and indentureship.” Let us look at some of these factors: 1. T h e f i r s t experiment with indentured laborers in 1838 was
terminated because of the neo-slave nature of indentureship. The first arrivals were treated in similar manner as Africans under slavery. 2. The bulk of the African Workforce had remained on the plantations after emancipation, and demanded better wages and working conditions. There were sugar strikes in 184142 and 1847-48. According to Rodney, this strengthened the resolve of the planters to seek immigrant laborers. 3. The Sugar Duties Act of 1846 – which equalized duties between slave and free produced sugar. With the passage of the Act in 1846, free and slave produced sugar met on the global market. The cost of production of the cheaper slave produced sugar affected the price at which free produced sugar could be sold, and this acted to push change at the local level in British Guiana, where the result was imposition of the indentured contract, and depression of wage rates to match the cost of slave
produced sugar. This sent the sugar industry into crisis. The result was the demand that the majority of Afro Guyanese sugar workers take a 25% pay cut. 4. When the Afro Guyanese sugar workers rejected this imposition, their strike action was defeated because there were enough indentured contract laborers (East Indians and Portuguese) on the plantations. 5. A f r o G u y a n e s e sugar workers left estate residency/housing en masse – this led to over-population of the villages. 1848 was the year of change 1. In the intervening period, although indentured immigrants were tied to specific plantations, there were no rigid contracts. But this was not good enough to meet the challenge for complete control over the labor process. 2. What is worthy of note are the rapid changes of the immigration contract regulations governing indentured laborers and how
these became more draconian as more and more laborers were introduced. a. T h e p r o v i s i o n s governing the nature of the indentured contract went through rapid changes in the years 1846, 1848, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1862, and again in 1863. b. The most drastic changes began to occur in 1848 after the defeat of the sugar strike; these were followed by the changes in 1851 to require the indentured immigrant to be contracted to an estate for five years that is bound with an employer he/she selected. 3. E a c h c h a n g e represented a tightening of the noose around the neck of the East Indian immigrants. Each change brought them closer to the conditions of slavery. Walter Rodney and Alan Adamson help us understand the draconian nature of the contract and its application in the everyday setting. a. Rodney explained that the working of the indentured code was of such, (Continued on page 5)