IT is amazing what passes these days for free speech and intellectual debate. I make reference to the ongoing flurry of misleading information on various issues facing the nation. In the first instance some writers are going to great lengths to fool the public on the race question, by preying on Black fear and insecurity that they have been marginalised and left out in the cold because of an orchestrated plan by the present PPP/C government. The critics are saying that Indians were helped into a privileged position of prosperity by taking away that which rightfully belonged to Blacks, hence they classify Indians as the haves and Blacks as the have-nots,thereby perpetuating the politics of hate. But is this really true? Again I would have us delve into the historical records and make a true assessment of the whole situation. The PNC, mainly a Black-based party held the reins of power and “total control” of the state and state apparatus for 28 continuous years under the so-called socialist ideology of Forbes Burnham, something persons of the likes of Freddie Kissoon and David Hinds should be mindful of when they speak of dictatorship in the PPP/C administration. The fact is no one dared question or at least wrote any anti-government material in the press without fear of reprisal (persons like Freddie could not write such bold articles) they just did not exist or Burnham would have seen to it that they did not exist or were “bumped off,” a term Guyanese, particularly those of the WPA party are all too familiar with.
Yet other writers suffer from selective amnesia and now speak in awe of Desmond Hoyte and his Economic Recovery Programme and 6% growth of the economy but fail to address his dismal record in raising real GDP. We are well aware of the way Hoyte handled the housing crisis and the way he treated those at the lower end of the income bracket. When the hard times began to bite into the local economy, when money and jobs were hard to come by, when basic food items were considered luxury items and there was no place to call home; therefore to try to ward off the high cost of living and the harsh realities of no place to rest their heads persons turned to squatting.
This was a clever tactic of the urban poor done under the banner of “urban farming” a system set up by the destitute among us patterning their lives after the Indians on the railway embankment. Of course, farming as they put it was furthest from their minds; the ultimate aim was to fulfil the hunger for a place called home. Hoyte abhorred squatting and brutally put down any attempts by the poor to gain access to land by those means. Police with their tracker dogs were sent in to race them off the land. I vividly remember those days while walking from U.G to Guyhoc Park because I could not afford to pay the fare for a non-functional bus service to Georgetown, so I had to walk through the mud dam which is now Sophia’s main road. I remember those poor souls peeping through the slatted walls of their shacks in fear that another imminent raid might be in the making at the sound of our approaching footsteps. Yes, those were the days! The good old days of the PNC! Sophia is now a regularised urban community; thanks to the PPP/C persons can now live in places they can now call home. That is why President Jagdeo has the admiration and overwhelming support of the people in Black communities. Jagdeo can go into those communities and be treated as an African prince, quite to the chagrin of some commentators like David Hinds and his cohorts. The reason the president can do this is not that the people there “were bribed” as some may seem to suggest, but for what the party in government has done for them.

So all of this race talk that the PPP/C is a racial party and only caters for the needs of the Indian is hogwash and fades into oblivion when you compare what the PNC has done for the Black Man as against what the PPP/C has done. For a party that wiped out the middle class (a category in which most Blacks were), the PNC has the audacity to tell the world that they have Afro Guyanese’s interest at heart. When they left office Afro Guyanese were broken economically, spiritually and morally. Hope returned when the PPP came into the picture. To hammer home my point more forcibly, in the days of the PNC when you saw a woman driving a motor car it was a customary sight for that woman to be Indian, today, lots of black women drive cars which tells me that the PPP/C has indeed done many wonderful things and are worthy of meritorious acclaim. They have lifted the status of our womenfolk which tells me again the reason for the president having such charisma around black communities.

So to those engaged in the ongoing debate as to who really cares for their race, I would ask for the people to examine the facts carefully and you will come up with honest conclusions.