Dear Editor,
It has almost been a year since I wrote my last letter about the African Renaissance. Recently, there has been much in the letter to the Editor column on the need for Africans to stop crying and to get about with lifting themselves about by the bootstrap. Writers such as Lin-Jay Harry-Voglezon , F. Skinner, Evan Thomas , Andaiye Moore and other AFC supporters have taken on Osafo Mobibo about his very true statements about the lack of leadership shown by AFC African leaders when it comes to African issues. Like the other Parties, the AFC claims to be a National Party funded by Indians but whose voter base is African. Split-personality is their nature even though the better word would be schizophrenic.
Osafo, keep on writing. Conscious Africans are supportive of your views. What is really strange about these proponents of African self development is that they were very silent when I wrote about the “Economic imperatives of the African Renaissance” exactly year ago. Let me remind them of what I wrote: “some the economic imperatives of the African Renaissance include:
1. A full understanding that shared governance is a fundamental Human Right of Africans in Guyana and good governance a sine qua non for economic growth.
2. Africans recognizing that economic power leads to political power but the reverse is not necessarily so.
3. The formation of an African Business Council of Guyana’s best and brightest African economists/businessmen to develop sustainable strategies for African economic growth and African village revitalization and resuscitation. This group should also map village needs and help them to create bankable business plans. This Council should also perform small business management and entrepreneurship training in villages , perhaps with the help of IPED.
4. The African Business Council to represent the needs and aspirations of African businesses on the Competitiveness Council. The Private Sector Commission although it has very capable leadership under Mike Correia, cannot meet this need.
5. The pursuit of a financial architecture that would provide capital for viable African businesses. This may or may not include Globe Trust because its license, heritage and the limitations of the Financial Institutions Act curtails out of the box thinking. The international community should however facilitate the re-capitalization of Globe Trust under capable African leadership.. Perhaps the IDB can find US$4 million out of the Competitiveness Council’s budget because it surely would improve Guyana’s competitiveness if Africans are part of the economy and not just consumers. What Africans may really need instead of a bank is a strategic partnership with an existing bank and a relationship with trade unions and African organizations to pool resources to finance well conceived business plans and to leverage assets to cascade other economic benefits into African communities. A remittance strategy could be built into this approach.
6. The recognition that land is in our “ancestral souls” and given the enormous price we paid during slavery, we must go back to the soil. Even if just to feed ourselves but more importantly, agriculture has to be a strategic industry for Guyana. Africans must recognize that land is a critical component of wealth creation. Africans must focus on agricultural products for self sufficiency and export.
7. Africans must create more businesses that serve the needs of African communities. This can be done jointly with other Africans or other cultural collectives.
8. Africans need to pool together to create more small businesses that create more employment . There are many lessons to be learned from other cultural collectives in Guyana and there are many successful models that can be utilized in Guyana.
Sadly enough, Guyana has failed political leadership in its two main Parties. The PPP is what I said it was a year ago, even though Kissooon was upset about my analysis. Now he has seen the light and is now the most ardent supporter of my views.
This government used race to win elections and daily uses race to reward or punish.
Corruption…is the next human rights issue in Guyana. Guyana’s mode of daily life is run on the bloodline of incessant corruption. Transparency International has already highlighted Guyana’s notoriety. But corruption in Guyana is more insidious than that. Corruption in Guyana has a fundamental ethnic dimension.
Buxton has been awarded a grant for a community centre through the European Union funded Guyana Micro Projects Program……President Jagdeo, Minister Ashni Singh and T. Balgobin of the Ministry of Finance have held back this award while approving funding for PPP and Indian groups who were awarded the same type of grant 3 months after Buxton was the first awardee. The AFC hs blown a great chance to make a difference. They ignore their African base because they want to appear to be neutral to all races. This is a multi-racial illusion and they should know that Africans understand they are ventriloquists using God as their mantle of deception.
The PNC and AFC should give us all a valentine gift of love by providing us with the only good deed they can perform, a permanent boycott of Parliament. Both parties have become accomplices to a racist dictatorship by sitting in Parliament. Here they influence nothing and can change nothing even when the great majority of the population wants change.
If the PNC and AFC remain in Parliament they are no better than the PPP. Leadership is about moral and physical courage. If these two parties lack both, then they will remain in Parliament and be seen by Africans in Guyana as selfish middle class cowards.
VAT, casino gambling and the removal of advertisements from Stabroek News highlight the futility of operating in a pernicious Westminster model in which a minority electoral victory facilitated by racist campaigning strategies have given false legality to a bunch of ethnic bullies and their criminal associates. This is indeed the Christmas season and to believe that President Jagdeo would listen to underlings in the Parliament is to believe in Santa Claus.
The Church and many members of the let’s-bury-our-heads African middle class should now understand what I was saying when I wrote about the African Renaissance. This government does not rule with any morality or inclusiveness. The Church lies prone, like the Parliament, and has lost its moral vision.
So as we go into this holiday season, I wish the writers defending the AFC should spend their energies in our African communities and write about the human rights abscess Guyana is.
May press freedom live.
Yours faithfully,
Eric Phillips
