Dear Editor,
I was awakened by the pinging sound of my phone, indicating a message awaited me. It was 6.15 am on a rainy Friday morning, June 03, 2022. I checked the WhatsApp message: it was from a former Cabinet colleague who was advising me to check Allan Fenty’s ‘Frankly Speaking’ column that was published in the Stabroek News (SN) of the same date.
Let me, at the outset, confess that I am not a fan of the ‘Frankly Speaking’ column. Although it is meant to bring some levity to the weekend reading, the column is less of speaking frankly and more of anti-PNC, anti-Coalition government rantings. Nevertheless, I did as I was advised. I was confronted with the bold headline, ‘Comrade Jordan vs the PPP and poverty.’
I was not disappointed in my earlier assessment of the column. But Mr Fenty is entitled to his opinions, expressed in his weekly opinion pieces that are made possible by SN. However, I take umbrage at the following extract from the column, “…, Jordan once threatened ‘war break’ during a PNC/APNU campaign outing in a hinterland location.” This is not the first time that this ‘war break!’ has been used by a columnist to suggest that I threatened mayhem or upheaval. I thought I had put this mischief to rest last year October when I wrote a letter to the editor of Kaieteur News. Maybe, Fenty missed that letter. I give him the benefit of the doubt.
The meeting to which Mr Fenty referred took place on March 31, 2019, in Bartica. I have the unedited tape of my roughly 18-minute speech, which can be sourced from You Tube. I produce below, the relevant, verbatim extract:
“We are in a war; not the war using slings and arrows, or guns and bullets. But, we are in a war for the survival of ourselves; the survival of our children and the survival of the future generation of this country. We are in a war to execute the Green State Development Strategy using our bountiful resources that are expected to start flowing next year [2020]. You got to understand this, comrade: nothing will be given to you; and you had the experience of 23 years. Is not me who telling you this. You experience 23 years under the last government and you said you had enough. And you gave us a chance. And, despite all the odds, all the odds, and all the different people and constituencies that didn’t vote for us, we still made certain that development was allround. Some of our own … some of our supporters curse us out, buse us out, and said ‘we vote[d] for you and look at our communities. You leaving us to go to people who you don’t vote for.’ But, comrades, this is a government for all the people. We cannot, we cannot lower ourselves to those other people where partisan government, partisan government … Partisan development … Are you going to make the mistake, are you going to make the mistake to make those people come back to power to put their hands on our oil money? Comrades, are you going to make that mistake? Well, from today, comrade, War Break!”
No threats, no banshee war cry, no calls for physical confrontation. The rallying cry was self-evident in that extract. I hope Mr Fenty would correct the mischief he.
Yours faithfully,
Winston Jordan
Former Minister of Finance
