Racism is the People Progressive Party’s (PPP) dutty story. Ashni Singh ran out last week to attack Nigel Hinds because Hinds spoke the truth about the lot of black people in Guyana, and refused to be a PPP house slave. When Hinds sang a tune the PPP loved during the protracted 2020 elections he was welcomed, now – not so much. The PPP like black people until black people decide they want upward mobility. Ashni described Hinds by many adjectives none of which was ‘Guardian of Democracy’. Those days are long gone. Today if you’re black stay back. Democracy begins and ends with elections for the PPP.
The PPP got a black people problem. They have been anti-black too long to change now in the meaningful ways that matter in this new age. We are more pliable to change when we are young. The PPP is big people now, stuck in their ways and an era hisory frowns upon. It is going to take the PPP as long as it has been anti-black people to correct the errors of its ways. After Ashni run in back, the PPP rolled out its other inconsequential PM, Mark Phillips, the very week Queen’s College all-Indian cast’s welcome message video debuted and went viral on social media, with a PPP Minister Vindhya Persaud in the lead.
The spectacle of Phillips reminded me of Hinds lacerating words: “Having a few African-Guyanese as window dressers and rubber stamps, with high sounding titles and minuscule decision-making powers and who are willing to accept the crumbs and scraps for personal and marginal privileges is an embarrassing and humiliating spectacle to observe for conscious blacks.”
Prometheus Bound is instructive that “Power newly won is always harsh” and so it was that the ink had not dried on Claudette Singh’s declaration on invalid votes that fateful August day when the assault began on any semblance of black power. Freddie Kissoon a decade earlier at his peak had set out the framework to interrogate the PPP on race relations, in particular black race relations. The work back then was directed against the decadence and filth of the Jagdeo presidency. The paper was aptly titled, “Ethnic power and Ideological racism: Comparing presidencies in Guyana”. Kissoon has either had an ontological shift, Alzheimer’s disease or Stockholm syndrome. He has forgotten those days. Days that are here again.
The PPP began with episodes like what transpired at Kingelly, West Coast Berbice, where veteran trade unionist Lincoln Lewis argued for his ancestral lands. There was to be found no judicious interlocutor in Attorney General (AG) Anil Nandlall. It was reported he told some Kingelly residents, “Listen wuh meh ah tell yuh, if Lincoln Lewis interferes with your operation…your occupation, break down whatever physical structure he has.” It was the beginning of the emergence of the apartheid state by a self-proclaimed chatree. That has now come on the doorsteps of African Guyanese-American Mrs. Eslene Richmond-Shockley of the charitable organization Caring for Others, Guyana Inc., whose lawfully leased lands to construct a storage facility for her organization was recently ripped away by the regime.
Freddie Kissoon traced a pattern under the Jagdeo regime, connected the dots, and concluded, “There is a relentless, almost frenetic process of African disappearance in all dimensions of substantial power. And this decrease is a result of governmental edicts, policies by the ruling elites and attitudes of Indian power-brokers.” This could have been written yesterday.
Additionally, Kissoon posited, “Even if one argues that when old parties are defeated and newer ones win elections, there are changes in personnel, the situation in Guyana is the total public realms cannot be easily explained save for racial engineering.” Think about that. It was written in June 2010. Hundreds of black people have been fired from the government by this iteration of the PPP. Ministry of Finance (MoF) Half Year report figures indicate that in the black people-dominated public sector, employment fell by 10.9 percent at the end of June 2022. This position reflected lower employment within Central Government by 17.7 percent.
In the sugar sector where the regime draws a large swath of its Indian support employment has gone up and none of the promised re-opening of sugar estates has occurred two years on. MoF figures inform us that employment at GUYSUCO increased by 7.7 percent. I will leave my readers to do the deductions as I search for a fitting close. I return to Kissoon, now a shadow of his former self, “Hard as one may try to situate these compelling changes within the framework of realpolitik, the race factor is simply too compelling to ignore.” Much too compelling, when we look at what is happening in Guyana today.
