Massy sales reps P

SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021 | GUYANATIMESGY.COM Armed bandits rob Massy sales reps

Three armed men on Saturday morning robbed two sales representatives attached to Massy Distribution while they were conducting a transaction in Grove, East Bank Demerara (EBD).

The robbery occurred sometime around 09:20h at Matthew’s Shop, Third Street, Grove.

Reports are that the sales reps - Rondell Downes and Lorenzo Sewchand - were conducting a transaction at Matthew’s Shop when they observed two males walking towards them - one was armed with a handgun.

The perpetrators went up to the victims and the armed suspect pointed the gun towards them and told them not to move or he was going to shoot them. They demanded all their belongings, which were handed over.

The men took $300 from Sewchand and from Downes, a Samsung Galaxy cellular phone valued $26,000 along with $51,184 cash which was the property of Massy Distribution.

After collecting the items, the suspects then made good their escape on foot into Kaneville, EBD.

Statements were taken and the investigation is in progress.

A few weeks ago, a resident of First Bridge, Grove, East Bank Demerara (EBD), was attacked and robbed by three cutlass-wielding bandits.

The incident occurred as the woman was making her way home from work.

Thirty-four-year-old Nikita Mohabir, a salesperson, was robbed of $280,000, two cellphones, and important documents.

Police said one of the perpetrators pointed a cutlass at the woman and told her to stay calm. He then grabbed her handbag containing the cash and other valuables.

After committing the act, he and his two accomplices made good their escape.

Settling scores…

…through PNC proxies

It was Burnham, self-proclaimed “founder-leader” of the PNC - Eusi Kwayana, John Carter, Jainarine Singh, JB Latchmansingh et al were presumably chopped liver! - who (in)famously introduced to Guyana the distinction between “causa belli and casus belli”, the CAUSE of a war versus the OCCASION for a war. Of course, Burnham never missed the occasion to “show off” his schoolboy accomplishments, and had to invoke the First Form Latin phrase he’d crammed back in the day!!

But some of his disciples in the present need to be reminded of their Master’s words as they launch their latest war of words (for now) against the PPP. The first salvo was to defend Walton-Desir’s indefensible assertion that Indian-Guyanese are “mentally lazy” to support the PPP versus African-Guyanese who’re mentally adept to pick the PNC! This defence wasn’t framed politically, but viscerally, as a “duty” of African men to defend an African woman who’s being attacked by the mentally lazy PPP bullies. The fella hoped it wouldn’t descend to the level of the days of the Resistance…but left the possibility open. You don’t draw lines when your women are under attack, do you?

A second front was opened up when President Ali issued an “Arrival Day” message to the nation that all arrivals had come “for their betterment”. Well, since he was giving an Arrival message, you’d think he was addressing the indentureds who arrived, wouldn’t you? But in trying to be inclusive in his preamble, he also alluded to AfricanGuyanese, who of course had involuntarily been brought as chattel slaves. He quickly apologised for his faux pas, but this didn’t cut any ice with the mustered PNC army. Condemnation swiftly followed, with the charge that this was proof that the “mentally lazy” tag wasn’t just a slur.

Well, at this time, it’s a war of words, but, as mentioned above, one warrior had explicitly declared that the troops should be ready to go beyond that if necessary. The fella quoted Gandhi’s dictum, “If there is a choice between cowardice and violence, then I would choose violence”. Never mind that, in the previous war, another of Gandhi’s aphorisms proved to be more apropos: “If we practise an eye for an eye, pretty soon the world will be blind”. Including the ones who gouge out eyes.

But to return to Burnham’s distinction, the complainedof words by the PNC brigade is merely the occasion for the war, the casus belli. They’ve been champing at the bit ever since Granger conceded defeat last August and demitted office. How dare he?! And we arrive at the causa belli - the real REASON for the war: losing office.

But moreso, losing the oil spoils!!

…delayed by no Congress

Diddling with Congress has a long lineage in the PNC. In fact, it goes back to even before there was a PNC, when Burnham was intent of seizing control of the PPP from the leader Jagan! The man actually surreptitiously organised one Congress without even inviting Jagan and the PPP executives, who stood by the party’s rules!! Anyhow, Burnham was forced to eventually concede defeat, and slunk off to form the PNC?

But he never gave up his tactic of fixing Congress Meetings to fix who was in and who was out. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Granger is using the same modus operandi to stave off the challenges to his leadership. The man confessed in Atlanta that he was a member of the PNC since 1965 - who would’ve then attended every Congress since, to swear loyalty to Burnham.

So, as a fella who doesn’t think, but just remembers, don’t hold your breath waiting for Congress.

You might just croak.

…and reversing scores

Granger settled old scores when he shuttered 4 sugar estates. He never forgot that he’d worked as a scab in the GAWU 1977 recognition strike. But for naught!!

But under new management, happy days will be here again! No?

SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021 | GUYANATIMESGY.COM Health Ministry reports 9 COVID-19 deaths

…130 new cases

Nine more coronavirus-related deaths were confirmed on Saturday by the Health Ministry – an alarming increase that caused the death toll to escalate to 323.

In a statement, the Health Ministry said that the deaths occurred between April 25 and May 7. The patients were all admitted with COVID-19-like symptoms but died while receiving care at medical institutions. Samples were taken at the time of admission, and polymerase chain

reaction (PCR) tests confirmed the positive results. Among the deaths is a 79-year-old female from Region Four (DemeraraMahaica), who died in April. Last month’s death

toll has moved to 66.

The other eight deaths occurred in May, indicating that there were 22 reported deaths within the first week of this month.

Those who died included a 54-year-old male from Region Six (East BerbiceCorentyne), a 56-yearold from Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), a 57-year-old from Region Six, a 43-year-old from Region Six, a 79-yearold from Region Four, a 68-year-old from Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), a 34-year-old male from Region Four and a 53-yearold male from Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara).

Meanwhile, local cases continue to rise with the detection of 130 positives in one day. For May, there has been an increase of 799 cases.

Total confirmed cases are at 14,203, comprising of 7117 males and 7086 females. To date, 12,072 have recovered completely.

In the facilities, 17 patients are seeking treatment in the Intensive Care Unit, with 100 in institutional isolation and 1691 in home isolation. This translates to 1808 active cases. Additionally, 17 persons are in institutional quarantine. Guyana has tested 129,335 persons thus far.

TURN TO PAGE 11

SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021 | GUYANATIMESGY.COM

Indian Arrival and Cultural Citizenship

My call last week for the May 5 public holiday, “Arrival Day”, to be renamed “Indian Arrival Day” elicited several objections. One interlocutor even claimed I was “unpatriotic”. This is quite ironic, since one of the major reasons for the decades-long call was to assert that the descendants of Indian Indentureds had arrived “home” and were asserting full Guyanese citizenship - cultural as well as political.

Their challenge was the Creole Culture into which they were thrown and told to assimilate was dominated by European forms and values. This had been hegemonically imposed on the Africans during slavery, during which Ravi Dev only remnants of African culture were retained. However, from the beginning of the 20th century, several organisations were launched by leaders like Marcus Garvey (Jamaica) and WEB DuBois (USA) to valorise African culture, and these influenced cultural developments in Guyana.

Unlike African-Guyanese, who had experienced an abyssal rupture with Africa because of those inhumane conditions of their enslavement, Indian indentureds maintained connections with India through several mechanisms, one being the continuous stream of new “culture-bearing” indentureds, even though they helped depress wages due to excess labour.

There were also the Commissions sent out by the Indian Government to examine the living conditions of the Indentureds; the Immigration Agent (“Crosby”) to whom complains could be lodged; several Islamic and Hindu missionaries who arrived in the 20th century; and, finally, the contracted return passage to India.

By the turn of the 20th century, several organisations had also been launched in the Indian community to maintain their culture. However, after the last return ship (SS Resurgent in 1955) and news of how India was different from their idealisation, all local Indians now totally accepted Guyana as their homeland. And while they retained much of their ancestral cultures, the latter had also been adapted to their new circumstances. They had helped create a culturally plural Guyanese society.

However, that last ship also coincided with a fateful turn in the political landscape, which saw a split in the nationalist PPP, which was calculatedly multiracial in its executive and its following.

Because of the split of the party that year, fuelled by Forbes Burnham’s ambitions, both he and Jagan admitted that, by and large, by the 1957 elections, the base had split along African and Indian ethnic lines. That trend continued in the 1961 elections and was cemented in 1964 after ethnic riots in the preceding three years. The PNC that was handed power at the end of 1964, and continued to hold on to that power unbroken until 1992, was dominated politically by African-Guyanese.

But there was a cultural component of the changes that served to exclude Indian-Guyanese from the definition of who were “Guyanese” and its nexus with power. During the 1960s and 1970s, the West Indies, including Guyana, were swept by the Black Power Movement out of the USA. In T&T, even though Eric Williams had programmatically institutionalised AfricanTrinidadian culture as “national culture”, an army unit staged a rebellion in 1970 under the Black Power banner. The latter ideology had demonstrated that groups - identified racially (and analogously ethnically, sexually, etc) - could also be oppressed along those lines through exclusion from the power relations. Inter-sectionally, the oppression had to also be fought along those lines. The army unit in T&T was making a distinction between political and cultural citizenship: even though people may have full legal rights of citizenship, barriers to cultural citizenship could remain and become markers for discrimination.

In Guyana, the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA), founded in 1964 and aligned with the PNC, solidified African Guyanese support.

The PPP under Dr Jagan, supported by most Indian-Guyanese, had declared itself a Marxist party in 1969 and gave short shrift to the cultural question. When the WPA was launched in 1974, with ASCRIA and IPRA ostensibly as “African and Indian” groups, the leader of the latter, Moses Bhagwan, confirmed to this writer that his position was that Indians were politically excluded by the PNC, but their cultural oppression was not on his radar. With the return of free and fair elections in 1992, and the PPP to office, Indian groups, including JAGUAR Committee for Democracy (JCD) and ROAR, raised the question of cultural citizenship of IndianGuyanese.

The call for Indian Arrival Day was one project for IndianGuyanese to claim their Cultural Guyanese Citizenship - equal to those of other groups in the mosaic of a multicultural Guyana.

Health Ministry reports 9...

FROM PAGE 9

A breakdown shows 14 new cases in Region Three, 72 in Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica), seven in Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), 10 in Region Six (East BerbiceCorentyne), 18 in Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), one in Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and 18 in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice).

The confirmed cases remain at 1081 in Region One (Barima-Waini), 403 in Region Two (PomeroonSupenaam) and 263 in Region Eight (PotaroSiparuni).

In the new week, 60,000 Sputnik V vaccines are expected to arrive – in order to continue Guyana’s vaccination campaign. With this fourth consignment, the country would be in receipt of 198,000 shots from this State purchase. Then, another 38,000 vaccines from the COVAX facility will also arrive later this month.

Recent statistics have shown the country’s vaccination campaign exceeding 154,000 first doses and 7000 second doses. This represents over 30 per cent of the adult population.

All Guyanese are reminded to observe the protocols of the COVID-19 Emergency Measures (No 17), which are in effect until May 31, 2021. This order emphasises the need for correct and consistent use of a face mask when leaving your home; the importance of maintaining the six feet physical distance from others; and the need for good hand hygiene to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.

If anyone is displaying any of the symptoms associated with COVID-19 or needs any additional information, contact the COVID-19 Hotline 2311166, 226-7480 or 624-6674 immediately or visit www. health.gov.gy.