I AM having great fun reading the many articles condemning President Jagdeo for his speech at Babu John; fun in the sense that these individuals have proven themselves to be either suffering from selective amnesia or are plain stupid, and I mean their stupidity is stupendous! There are times when you need to roll up your sleeves, get into the ring and throw some serious punches, and this is exactly what the president did as he went straight for the jugular of the PNC’s hierarchy.
Who would dare deny the atrocities of the army and the role of Colonel David Granger in the 1973 murder of those guys on the Corentyne? The fact is the “shoot to kill” order, which is being misconstrued now, was in force then, and the PNC Strongman Granger was integral to the strategies of the day.
The plan on that election day was to detain the ballot boxes at the place of poll and have the votes counted, thereby exposing the big lie of the PNC garnering overwhelming support in known PPP areas; it was also an attempt to uncover the rigging that was unknown to the whole world.
We know the rest of the story when those activists were gunned down like animals by persons acting under Granger’s control. These events took place at a time when everything done by and for the government of the day was executed as strict state secret and the precision that surrounded the military exercise that day we might never know and cannot accurately tell, everything was on total lockdown.
Staying on  the subject of knowing the truth, those were the days when the media was used as a propaganda tool for the party  because immediately thereafter, Burnham came on the radio condemning the agitators for “stealing” the ballot boxes and for subversive behaviour, using uniquely coloured language as he went about his usual rants.
The print medium was no different because we were advised into reading the Guyana Chronicle, a newspaper loved and revered by the regime, to gain additional information on the subject.
We must be reminded of the past, no matter how painful it is, so that we are not doomed to repeat it. The President is right: There is blood on their hands; plenty of it.