The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) says it cannot take the PPP’s comments about racial unity and power sharing seriously as every observant Guyanese knows that it is the ruling party which has been the lone obstacle to power sharing and genuine racial reconciliation in Guyana.
“It is absolutely laughable to dub the recent Buxton scenario power sharing,” the party insisted in a statement yesterday, bashing the PPP for casting “aspersions on political parties of the opposition for their outspoken views regarding President Jagdeo’s belated visit to Buxton”.
The WPA maintained that what “is clear is that the PPP wants power sharing among unequals whereby it alone has the power to give and control while the other side comes on its knees begging.”
But that is not the WPA concept of power sharing and racial reconciliation, the party noted.
“We feel that real power sharing and national reconciliation must be based on jointness, equality, mutual respect and be administered in an atmosphere of dignified engagement,” the WPA asserted.
However, the WPA noted that it was not surprised by the statement emanating from Freedom House and questioned the contention that the PPP government had done more to improve roads and school buildings than the previous government while seeking to blame others for the outbreak of violence in the village and questioning the sincerity of those who condemned the visit as ‘political opportunism’.
On the matter of infrastructure, the WPA said that while it recognizes the government’s “limited effort” in this regard, it also feels that the statement ignores the fact that improved infrastructure is not the sum total of development.
According to the WPA, the key question is whether the improvement in infrastructure has led to improvement in the material lives of the villagers, and the answer is no.
The WPA also maintained that despite improved school buildings, illiteracy has hit an all-time high in Buxton, the African Guyanese community in general and many poor Indian Guyanese communities.
“Buildings by themselves do not educate children,” the WPA observed.
And if the president and his colleagues listened to the teachers from Buxton, who were taken to State House by the PPP’s new front-men and women in Buxton, they should be ashamed to boast of their efforts at building more schools in the village, the WPA declared.
The party also recalled that since 1992 it had called for the declaration of a state of emergency in education and a complete overhaul of the education system.
The WPA said further that the PPP cannot deny that its misguided policies, both covert and overt, contributed to the destruction of the community’s infrastructure, pointing to the destruction of the farmlands aback the village, which could not have been undertaken without direct orders from the highest level.
The WPA posited also that while “the PPP seems to derive great comfort in identifying issues which have to do with meeting its legal obligations to the community, it conveniently forgets its own human rights violations in Buxton, including kidnapping and torture of several of its citizens, by the official and non-official security forces controlled by the government.”
Meanwhile, the WPA pointed out that the government is yet to release the promised report on acts of torture against Buxtonians, Patrick Sumner and Victor Jones.
The WPA also observed that “it was no less a person than the president who, in his initial response to the Lusignan murders, denigrated the entire Buxton community by blaming it for the killings.”
In the meantime, the WPA called on the PPP to explain why it and its government rejected and continue to resist a call by the WPA, which was supported by the PNC and other opposition forces in the People’s Movement for Justice, for an independent International Commission of Inquiry into all of the violence beginning with the 2002 Mashramani Jail Break.
“The WPA’s call for an all-party summit to address the issue was similarly rejected by the government. WPA also recalls that it was its members and supporters who were loudest in their condemnation of the violence.”
And the widely circulated statement by Andaiye, Eusi Kwayana and David Hinds was then praised by the government, the WPA added.
The party said also that it has no apology for standing on the side of African Guyanese in their hour of stress and challenge from both within its ranks and outside of it.
“During the period when Indian Guyanese were the victims of official bullying it stood with them, often with violent consequences, from the Arnold Rampersaud trial to the kick-down-the door robberies.”
The party concluded that it will not be written out of history or chased off the current political landscape but it will maintain a “persistent resolve to realize the triumph of rightness over wrong.”
