‘EMANCIPATE YOURSELF FROM MENTAL SLAVERY…’: President Bharrat Jagdeo at Babu John, Port Mourant, Berbice on Sunday last.

PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo has exhorted people to pay attention to the issues surrounding them because there is an active battle for their minds and they need to resist the naysayers with brain power.
He was addressing scores of people, among them numerous supporters of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), gathered last Sunday at the 13th annual wreath-laying ceremony to mark the death anniversary of the late President, Dr. Cheddi Jagan and also pay tribute to other late President, Mrs. Janet Jagan.
President Jagdeo outlined some of the attributes of Dr. Jagan, such as his being a great thinker, honest, having great integrity, was a democrat in a true fashion and always a nationalist.
“But there is one thing that we all recognised throughout his struggle and throughout his life,  that he was fiercely independent and always sought to chart a national pathway to prosperity that would be different to the remedies and prescriptions of the developed world.
“As we move forward and as we manage our country in this era, we have to understand who are going to be our next heroes; whose examples are we going to emulate in the future,” he advised.
Continuing, President Jagdeo said: “We need to understand what kind of world we live in and what kind of Guyana we want to create and whose values we are going to use, whose ideas we are going to use in creating this new Guyana and, more importantly, do justice to it as Bob Marley said, we have to rid ourselves of mental slavery.”
According to the Head of State: “We have a group of naysayers in this country; everything that  we do is wrong for them.”
“…they are very dangerous, because they, sometimes, use very alluring arguments, arguments that sound attractive to people and so there are people who will be duped by these arguments and may start subscribing to them,” he cautioned.
President Jagdeo alluded to arguments relating to his recent trip to Iran, the establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency and talk about corruption.
“We, in the PPP, have an independent foreign policy guided by what our party constantly believes in, that we should forge friendship and solidarity with progressive forces right across this world,” he explained.
President Jagdeo reiterated that Iran will help Guyana to do a mineral map and  “that would allow us to know our mineral potential, so we can work and have better arrangements with investors and add greater value to this country.”
He said Iran will also help to train medical specialists and reminded that, within three to four years, there would be 900 Guyanese doctors working in the public health system, more than the previous 150.
“But we don’t need only general medical practitioners. We need specialists and Iran will help us to train these specialists so that our hospitals can offer the type of care that we all need,” the President observed.

PROBLEM
Noting that the United States (U.S.) has a problem with Iran, he said: “When I came back from Iran, some people started writing. The first thing they were saying was that I shouldn’t have gone to Iran, the U.S. would be unhappy about it.
“First of all, I am not here to please the U.S. The PPP didn’t get elected to please the U.S. We got elected to serve the interest of the Guyanese people.
“And even President Obama didn’t have a problem with me talking to Iran. He just named an envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference but these people here, who have this slave mentality, they anticipate what the U.S. may want, what the U.S. may feel and they start criticising the Government based on that,” he stated.
Declaring that the critics have double standards, President Jagdeo said:  “They want us to tackle crime. They say in developed countries the crime rate is lower than in ours.”
He pointed out that those law enforcement agencies have all the tools, good intelligence and good laws to support the law enforcement officers.
Continuing his narrative about the criticisms, President Jagdeo said: “Recently, we decided to establish an intelligence agency that would have intelligence led policing and law enforcement efforts in Guyana.
“Guess what the response was? We want to spy on them. I have said before that, if we want to spy on the Alliance for Change (AFC) and the others, we go to the rum shop, not develop an intelligence agency.
“But they use the developed countries as a standard, yet, when you put in place the measures to deal with those issues, to give the Police here the same tools that the developed countries have, they see some jumbie, some sinister motive behind this.
“Again, it comes back to this group of people who are not capable of independent thinking,” President Jagdeo declared.
On the issue of drug dealing, he said: “They say we support drug dealers. The AFC is still to answer the question about the pepper sauce money from the drug dealers that they got. But let me tell you, our efforts to tackle drug dealing is a hundred times that of the U.S.”

FAILURE
He said the U.S. has the biggest failure of law enforcement, because drugs through Guyana, Suriname, Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador and Afghanistan, all end up in the U.S.
“And, if they are so concerned about money laundering, that is where the drug is sold. That is the primary source where the money arises; it is the biggest country for money laundering in the world and the last State that could lecture us is the U.S., because they have the biggest drug trade being practised under the nose of their law enforcement agencies. They can’t lecture us,” President Jagdeo insisted.
He said no country in this hemisphere including the U.S. has ever polygraphed every member of the drug squad, among them the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU), Police and airport personnel, as in the case of Guyana.
“We have fired quite a large number of people from all the agencies and we have done this twice in the last year,” the President disclosed.
He went on to challenge: “Ask the U.S. But some of the spineless journalists we have lingering around, looking for stories about the Government, making up stories about the Government, they would never ask the U.S. or the ambassador here those questions.
“So I don’t take any lecture from any power or the U.S. about drug dealing.”
Alluding to corruption and the current issue surrounding the Regional Executive Officer in Region Four (Demerara/Mahaica), President Jagdeo said: “Guess who called in the Auditor General. It was Kellawan Lall, the Minister. Guess who called in the Police. It was Kellawan Lall, the Minister. If you read Kaieteur News and some of the others, you would think that it was the People’s National Congress (PNC) Regional Chairman who called in these people. Why? Because they would never give credit to the Government for fighting  corruption.” 
“I say all of these things because there is an active battle out there for your minds and the battle is being waged, sometimes, not by the politicians but by some sections of the hostile media,” he charged.
President Jagdeo warned: “We have to watch. We have to be careful. We have to analyse what they say and we have to resist…and we resist not with guns, not by fighting but with brain power. So I urge you to pay attention to some of these thi
ngs.”

PHOTO saved in Graphics file as Jagdeo Brain Power