Dear Editor,
It is very easy, I suppose, to rewrite history, when the writer cares only to put forward points that support that individual’s agenda. Your Wednesday, January 16, edition contained two letters, which, to me, are examples of that type of historian in the making.
First, there is Mr Peter S Charles’s view in his letter captioned “Government has not taken away the villages the former slaves purchased” This gentleman names two such villages and contemptuously says that, with the others these amounted to “less than 10,000 acres”. I say all the more reason why the descendants should not be begrudged the assistance they need to ensure the acquisition of the requisite titles. Instead, places like Farm on the East Bank Essequibo and Queenstown have seen, over the years, cases of what we know as claims by prescriptive right, because the process is abused.
But Mr Charles seems to think that these descendants of slaves are not worth being bothered with since, as he puts it, those slaves came to the west, after having been sold into the state by their fellow Africans. Now what has that got to do with seeking to ensure that lands purchased with hard-earned savings by emancipated slaves, are legally passed down to survivors? Or does Mr Charles not know that the sale of captives into bondage (or even holding them as such by their captors) had been a world-wide practice from time immemorial? But I ask again, what has that got to do with whether or not the process being proposed by ACDA and others should be adopted or not?
And by the way, Mr Charles had better read well to know that the greater number of those hundreds of thousands of Africans brought over here, were forcefully kidnapped from their farms, their villages, by marauding “traders” who were bent upon enriching themselves by that means. Roots might not be all accurate, but, for a start I would suggest a read of that story. But there are others that are available – that is, if this Mr Charles can face the facts of that period.
Then there is this other gentleman, Mr Murtland Slugger Williams, telling us that “Prices shot up after the 1989 budget”. Yes, we know that. We also know other things that this Mr Williams may not have remembered, or never understood, or else finds inconvenient. The Hoyte administration had expected prices to rise. The rate of exchange had been held down by means that did not allow the free conduct of business. Letting it float was a calculated move. However, it was part of what was described as an Economic Recovery Programme and it was accompanied by the Social Impact Amelioration Programme (SIMAP) which the PPP/C administration immediately grasped and proceeded to politicise, as it has done almost everything since 1992.
What has this regime done with all the funding arranged mainly by Mr Hoyte prior to the change of government? What has happened to electricity, to water, to roads to everything for which financing flowed so readily over the last fifteen years, through the push-start given by the outgoing Hoyte administration?
And yes, people were hurt by the initial impact of those measures. Are they any less hurt today, more than 15 years later? Yes, many PNC supporters must have been among those who protested. It is nice to know that it was our “rowdy” ladies that rescued Mr Rohee then. History does not seem to indicate his appreciation. History has shown, however, that those same women also came to the rescue (or aid) at a later date, of one Mr Robert HO Corbin, who was leading a protest against the activities of a PPP/C administration which was then “pun top” and which did not seem to be imbued with any care about who got hurt in the process. You remember that Mr Murtland Slugger Williams, and by the same police?
Talk about telling the whole truth and nothing more – or less?
Yours faithfully,
Walter A Jordan
