Dear Editor,
While my personal style has been to conduct my business and stay out of the limelight, it seems as if the limelight has decided to come to me uninvited. In the second time in as many weeks, my name has been mentioned by Leader of the Oppo-sition, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo during his press conferences.
Mr. Jagdeo’s argument in summary is that since I am ‘related’ to Mr. Saratu Phillips whom he accuses of being awarded state lands, and since Mr. Joseph Harmon, Director-General in the Ministry of the Presidency is a tenant of one my properties, I must somehow be seen as a beneficiary of some corrupt transaction that he himself does not identify.
I believe that the image that Mr. Jagdeo tried to paint of me is one of some hustler trying to catch where I can under a favourable government. The truth of my story is that I was born to successful artisanal miner from Bartica, a man who brought me into the family business when I was still in my mid-teens. From that early age, I had a first hand perspective on the mining life, one in which you could be a millionaire one day, a beggar the next, and then a millionaire again. I was determined to build upon the successes of my father, and to avoid the volatile nature of the pork-knocking life. When I took over fully after his passing, I decided to enter the hotel industry in Bartica and to further diversify from there. Today, my business concerns span real estate, aviation and security services even as I’ve successfully maintained the core business of mining. Indeed, it was because of my achievements in the mining business that I was nominated for and received a national award, the Arrow of Achievement, during Mr. Jagdeo’s final year in office, 2011.
And it is not that I didn’t know hardship. It was under Mr. Jagdeo’s administration that I had to watch as my father lost the battle against special interests, close to the then
government, who coveted and took over land he had worked hard for. It was under Mr. Jagdeo’s toxic political environment in which certain business interests became so untouchable that when I spoke in defence of a small miner being bullied, similar to what happened with my father, I had to deal with my two Georgetown houses being riddled with bullets to send me a message to know my place.
Mr. Jagdeo claims that his intention in calling names had nothing to do with race, but what he claims to be ‘special interests’ connected to government. His record on racial discrimination, however, speaks for itself. From the proliferation of racist letters in the state media to his discriminatory policy of appointments on public boards and in diplomatic posts to his own public rhetoric on the campaign trail in 2015, it is clear where the prejudicial nature of Mr. Jagdeo lies. Even though I was awarded for my achievements in mining, under the PPP, there was a glass ceiling I dared not even attempt to break as an Afro-Guyanese, the coveted gold export licence. Indeed, because this discriminatory policy had so infected the public and private financial infrastructure in Guyana, it took me tremendous effort under the current administration to gain a licence in 2018, at the time the only African-Guyanese to do so. I have documentation of precisely where the hurdles were, and what I had to do to overcome them.
Commissioner of Lands and Surveys, Mr. Trevor Benn has had to debunk Mr. Jagdeo’s claims, both general and some specific. Mr. Charles Ceres has had to hold a full press conference deconstructing the claims against him made as well. And all this comes just weeks after Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority, Mr. Godfrey Statia, had to similarly debunk Mr. Jagdeo’s claims on another set of issues. While I understand that the Leader of the Opposition has his political work to do, credibility and integrity should matter and there should be no justification for the level of misinformation he insists on putting out into the public domain. It appears to me that if someone does not fall into Mr. Jagdeo’s small cabal of business associates, you can easily become collateral damage in his relentless political campaign. A strong undercurrent of Mr. Jagdeo’s recent tirades is that of the resentment that there is clear empowerment of a people that he spent so long in marginalizing. Very bluntly, the demonstration of Afro-Guyanese capacity to undertake and manage significant, transformative investment is vexing to Mr. Jagdeo.
Someone once said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince people that he did not exist. Mr. Jagdeo cannot have it both ways: he can either be the diligent statesman committed to the public interest that he has been trying hard to sell himself as ever since he formally reentered politics as Leader of the Opposition; or he can be the power-hungry former President, so greedy for another taste of power and access to our country’s newfound wealth that he does not care whose name he dirties in order to do so.
Shawn Hopkinson, AA
CEO
Hopkinson Mining
