Dear Editor,
I noted the daily Chronicle report on President’s Ali visit with the diaspora in New York. Following the PPP’s script, he talked about the many Guyanese leaving Guyana empty handed, according to him, due to the PNC dictatorship. This is a propaganda trick and falsehood the PPP has been getting away with for a long time. Since the end of the First World War (1914-1918), people moved first to the UK, the Caribbean and the United States. This continued particularly to the US and those with families will tell you that even during the Ten Year Depression in the US (1929-1939), Guyanese moved to the United States. This continued after the end of the Second World War, 1945.
The fear surrounding the Cold War provided the incentive for Guyanese to go North. Generally, the Portuguese at first found comfort in Canada. Records would show that during the PPP Government, 1957 – 1964, large numbers of Guyanese, Indo and Afro moved to the United States, a sprinkling setting in the Caribbean and even Surinam. This movement north continued unabated until this day. When the carnage was instigated by a PPP Minister and the Phantom group, people sought solace in North America. Today, this northern drift continues. In some cases, to unite with their kith and kin, settle and acquire citizenship or permanent status after 1945.
Today, it is difficult to identify any family in Guyana without some relative or family member already settled in North America. I publicly challenge President Ali to provide the statistics to justify his emotionally charged statement that it was during the dark days of the PNC-R authoritarian rule, that Guyanese left the shores of Guyana. Talking about dictatorship, let him explain how in spite of our massive inflow of money, the gap between the very rich and the poor continues to widen. Ali and his friends must stop this nonsense and cheap propaganda, and perhaps, when next he speaks to the diaspora, tell them who are the beneficiaries of these contracts and why there is every day a line of persons awaiting visas to go, as we say, up north.
Editor, only the truth can create conditions for a One Guyana, only the truth can set us free. The truth and the whole truth will prevail and pierce the darkness of propaganda. Only the truth can secure an honourable place for the President in our history.
Sincerely,
Hamilton Green
Elder
