Dear Editor,
At 12.54 am today, November 21, I finished reading a statement by Minister Robert Persaud, a young star of the People’s Progressive Party and its Civic partner in the PPP’s token version of a government of national unity.
I cannot hold Mr Robert Persaud, rather, young Brother Robert Persaud, responsible for a record of experiences he did not live through. Youth has its own big advantages. First-hand experience of the past is not one of them. Older people do better there.
Brother Persaud has chosen to apply a single test to the issue of loyalty to the outstanding servant of the people, the late Dr Walter Rodney.
Minister Persaud seems to accept an outlook on things that makes him think that organisations remain what they had been fifty years earlier. This, by popular testimony, is not true of the PPP, which has gone through changes of leading personnel, of behaviour, of values and of policy. Then there is the outcry against its glittering life-style. It seems to be Brother Robert Persaud’s conviction that the PNC has remained static in the things I have listed. I think I am most vigilant and cautious about the PNC, because of its well-known record of governmental excesses. Yet I hope I am not so daft as it assume that it has remained the same, unlike the PPP.
The advice to the WPA to keep out of PPP areas, “because they are organized and have education” is not a piece of fiction. I am one of the persons who received this advice. It followed a conference at NAACIE of many groups including the WPA to consider the PPP’s proposal for a National Patriotic Front. And this was in spite of the experience of Arnold Rampersaud of the PPP. Did the WPA accuse the PPP of betraying anyone? It was the late B H Benn who condemned the PPP’s move. Later he could become a High Commissioner of the PPP government.
The NPF conference and the PPP and the WPA agreed on number of district conferences to promote the proposals. The WPA drew up a schedule of proposed meetings which were spread out in PPP and PNC strongholds or, centres of support. It was at that time, long before the assassination of Rodney, while Rodney was active and ready, that the PPP knowingly and firmly took that position. “Spend your time in PNC areas.” One conference was held at Buxton-Annandale and no other took place, as the WPA did not agree with the PPP’s wish to keep out of its strongholds. Later things changed. That is number one.
Secondly, the PPP held, proposed and engaged and dreamed of unity with the People’s National Congress before and after the assassination of Darke, Dublin, Ohene and Walter Rodney. The PPP proposed the NPF in 1977 when no state killing had taken place. It then entered bodily and with documents and conditions, into talks for a national government in 1985, five years after Rodney had been removed.
The PPP has political divinity. It sprinkled political holy water from the Cup on those talks and made the sign of the sickle, and all became clean. It hid the 1985 talks from the party of Walter Rodney. Some think it was because it wanted a “piece of the action.” I think it wanted to act in defence of Guyana against external enemies. We in the WPA also felt the need but would have made our stand, if it became necessary, outside of government. On occasion we did so.
The PPP has always judged people and things according to its own interests and desires. Now, I am “Brother Eusi Kwayana.” A year ago in the Guyana Chronicle I was guilty of ethnic cleansing and a life of luxury. Letters disagreeing were not published. Brother Robert claims that I was a lone voice against the post-2001 madness. I was not. So was the same David Hinds, now turned enemy. And who was it that made the famous rebuke of violence, “Not in my name”? A small. strong woman named Andaiye. Does Brother Robert Persaud see how strong the temptation is to revise things? Or shall I continue?
When some gunmen in Europe planned to take over the world, they relied on the “law” that some powers would never join with the Soviet Union in defence, and the Soviet Union would not join with certain powers. Those hostile powers joined against the gunmen of Europe. That is how the present rulers were able to go to school in the USSR.
I have been absent from home, but that is my problem. In Guyana the government has made the country a hell for the majority, and a bawdy house for the corruptly rich minority. In the ’50s the late Keith Carter reminded us of a duty. In his words, not original, but timely, “I place my country before my party.”
The PPP as well as the PNC may well have had those words and that duty in mind when it gave critical support, when it proposed the 1977 NPF and when it joined in secret talks in1985.
So what?
Brother Robert Persaud does not seem to think that assassination results in death. For my part if a change of word could make the PNC support the call of an investigation into the killing of Walter Rodney, let the change be made. We shall know in time whether the PPP’s abstaining on that word removes its commitment to an enquiry, and whether those who voted for it were in fact abstaining.
For the past 55 years, Guyana has been torn apart against itself. All communal or racial conflict has been carried out in support of one or more of three parties, the United Force being the third. Why import a water cannon when the bulk of the country has no fire service? To give the conflict a chance to begin to end it, why not try, for the first time, a government of national unity, of all social forces? The old order is falling apart. Peace! Shanti! Salaam! Umoja na Kazi (unity and work)
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
