I HAVE read with utter amusement about what two letter writers have deemed to be an apology by the PNC. It was published in both the Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News, and sought to break down the PNC era of misrule and corruption into two separate and distinct components: PNC 1 and PNC 2, and then seek to conclude that PNC 2 under the Hoyte dictatorship had implicitly apologised to this nation for the ills and wrongdoings of PNC 1 under the Burnham dictatorship.

They further sought to conclude that Guyana was on the road to economic prosperity when the PPP/C took office in 1992. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Rodney CoI
Firstly, the letter writers are of the opinion that the Rodney Commission of Inquiry should have been held by the PPP/C Government in 1995. Is this a magical year? Why did the PNC Part 2 not hold a CoI into Rodney’s death?

Twelve years after his assassination, no inquiry was held by the PNC, yet these AFC/APNU letter writers are accusing the PPP/C of agitating racial disharmony.

Whether we seek to live in denial or not, voting has always been along racial lines in Guyana, and there is no solution in sight. But that is not the issue here. It would have been the patriotic duty of the WPA to bring closure to Rodney’s death, hence the PPP could not be accused of using the Rodney CoI to its political advantage. It does not matter to them that the Rodney family wanted to bring closure to this nefarious deed.

This nation needs answers for the gruesome murder of one of its most brilliant sons, and the perpetrators must be exposed for what they are or were. Would it not have been an act of political brilliance if this was done by the Hoyte government? Why do you think the PNC did not want such an inquiry? Well, the answers are now in the public domain!

‘Exotic Flowers’
The letter writers made a very simplistic conclusion: since they were not ‘harassed or victimised’ by PNC 2 in the run-up to the 1992 General Elections, then all was well in the entire country. They could not have appreciated the mounting international pressure on the Hoyte administration, especially from the USA, which was taking its toll. They could not have appreciated the efforts made by the PPP to cleanse the voters’ lists from 1990 to 1992 so that there would be a free and fair election; and neither could they understand the intervention of former US President Carter on Election Day 1992 to quell the violence which erupted by the PNC supporters when they realised that the PPP would win that election.

Hoyte had ‘free and fair’ elections pushed down his throat! Economic sanctions would have been imminent if the PNC had ‘misbehaved.’

Next, they hinted lightly to the fact that the Guyana dollar was devalued from 4 to 1 US in 1985 to 125 to 1 US by 1992. This sent the cost of living to astronomical heights during that period, and even though the bans were lifted on food items, the Guyanese people could hardly afford them because of the impoverish wages and salaries they received.

In 1992, the minimum wage was $65 per day, and that could not have even bought a pound of chicken! However, that is not important, since, during the PNC 2 era, Mr. Hoyte supported the letter writer’s father’s ‘flower shop’ by purchasing ‘exotic flowers’ from them. This was a great act of humanity done to a PPP supporter, according to these letter writers.

Why worry about the rest of the country when your flowers are bought, presumably to be placed on the graves of impoverished Guyanese?

The ‘Apologies’ of PNC 2
Unashamedly, the rest of the letter seeks to create, by implication, what appeared to them, during the last seven years of the PNC, to be an ‘apology’ by the PNC 2 Leader, Hugh Desmond Hoyte.

Firstly, the 1985 General Election under the late Desmond Hoyte was the most comprehensively rigged election in the history of this country. Hoyte gave himself 77.6 % of the total votes cast, and gave the PPP 15.6%. That was PNC 2’s first apology!

Secondly, the removal of the ban on food items, the removal of the price control and foreign exchange restrictions were the direct results of the 1988 deal with the IMF and World Bank. The PNC’s neck was on the economic guillotine! But this did nothing to alleviate the sufferings of the poor in Guyana, who had to pay exorbitant prices for these scarce items. The Indian businessmen to whom Hoyte reached out were the distributors of these scarce items, and they made fortunes fleecing the poor people! They donated millions to PNC 2 coffers. However, in effect the removal of the ‘ban’ only meant that you will not be jailed for having these items in your possession! They were still unaffordable! This was the PNC 2’s second apology!

Thirdly, by 1988, the economy was bankrupt and the National Service became an unnecessary ‘black hole’ and a millstone on the neck of the PNC, so they were forced to let it go! It was disbanded after years of humiliating experiences suffered by all races. I noticed that the letter writers said ‘perceived to be humiliating to Indian women’. I was there at Port Kaituma in 1983, and the sufferings, hardships and human degradations were experienced by men and women alike, and race has nothing to do with it. It was no ‘perception’, it was real as it was horrific.

People like these writers were born with golden spoons in their mouths, and should desist from insulting the sufferings of the Guyanese people! So this forced abortion was PNC 2’s third apology!

Fourthly, Hoyte did not cause the Rabbi to be prosecuted because of his sense of justice and fair play, but because he was forced to do so in order to maintain a good relationship with the US and to keep the aid flowing to Guyana. The Rabbi was a US convict! This act of duress was the PNC 2’s fourth apology! So much for PNC 2 apologies!

I don’t know which part of Guyana these two writers are from, since they claimed that “no independent TV or radio station has been granted a licence since the end of the Hoyte administration” in 1992.
Now Berbice alone has three TV stations and one radio station.

 PNC 2’s “Economic Progress”
Then the letter writers claimed that the economic progress started by the Hoyte administration continued until 2001. Let me refresh their confused minds a bit. Two years after PNC 2 took office, Guyana became one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere, with a per capita GDP of $500 US dollars. Hoyte, in 1988, went to the IMF and the World Bank for help, and it is they who implemented the Economic Recovery Programme, and Hoyte had to change course for economic survival. But this did nothing to change Guyana’s fortunes, since the mismanagement and corruption from PNC 1’s days continued unabatedly. By 1991, 60 % of the population was living below the poverty line, and inflation rose from 40% in 1988 to 125% in 1991. Wages and salaries fell far below the inflation rate, and the Guyana dollar was devalued by more than 4,333 %.

On May Day 1991, the General Secretary of the TUC, Joseph Pollydore, lamented the fact that workers were in a state of abject poverty and could not even buy ‘basic food’; and that the Government had left children breadless, and homes rice-less because of the inability of breadwinners to buy even minimum quantities for their families’.

Workers refer to the ERP as ‘Empty Rice Pots’! The minimum wage was just a meagre $65 dollars per day- not even the price for a pound of chicken! Furthermore, in 1990 the per capita GDP fell to $370 US, and when Hoyte took over it was 500 US dollars! Moreover, during all the years under the Hoyte administration the GDP continued to fall, to the extent that during the 1991 Budget presentation, Finance Minister Carl Greenidge admitted that several economic indicators were doing badly. It was that same year that Guyana showed a positive economic growth of 6.1 % after 15 years of negative growth. Ironically, this was achieved only after selling off 15 of the 41 state-owned enterprises at lesser than market value; by rescheduling the 2.1 billion US dollars foreign debt; by having no foreign currency reserve; by having a deficit in the Consolidated Fund of 18 billion Guyana dollars; by pressuring the workers by heavy taxes, and by bringing rice, sugar and bauxite down to their knees! Not to mention the falling and decaying infrastructure, the 13 hours per day ‘blackouts’, and the thriving ‘back track’ business!

Compare these today under the PPP/C Government because, today, in Guyana, these two letters say they are seeing a widening gap between the rich and the poor.
HASEEF YUSUF
AFC Councillor-Region 6