…for comparing colonisation with present managing of sugar industry by the State
PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday lashed out at union leaders for using the occasion of the commemoration of the death anniversary of the Enmore Martyrs as a grievance forum and strongly condemned those who would compare the period of colonisation to the present State managing of the sugar industry today.
He was delivering the feature address at the Enmore Martyrs rally to mark the 63rd anniversary of the death of the five sugar workers during British rule.
“Most people today recognise the importance of the Enmore Martyrs to the struggle of Guyana; the struggle for improving working conditions in the sugar industry itself and struggle for the freedom of Guyana,” he said.
He said that the martyrdom of the five workers happened at a very critical period in Guyana’s history when it catapulted and gave momentum to the independence that was taking place in Guyana at that time.
“I dare say that if we were to use this event as a grievance forum, then we would dishonour the memories of those people who gave their lives in the struggle for a better country,” he said.
“So, as I sat here tonight and I listened, I felt a bit pessimistic about the future and then thank God for the General Secretary [of the PPP Donald Ramotar]. He lifted my spirit again. He spoke with optimism about the future of Guyana and sugar. He spoke in a true Cheddi Jagan fashion, where he believes in the struggle and the importance of this industry, he is committed,” he said. “He spoke eloquently about the need for working class unity and struggle in this country and that is what Cheddi Jagan would do, because even in his darkest moments, he never became parochial,” said President Jagdeo.
“Donald Ramotar has all of those qualities and I look forward to him heading this country because he would bring all of those characteristics to bear in the management of our nation,” he said.
The president said those who confuse the era of the Enmore Martyrs’ struggle in Guyana with that of today’s challenges will never have their analyses right. “To equate the plantocracy with the management of the industry today is an analysis that is significantly flawed. Plantocracy is an ideology, an ideology based on foreign domination of our industry and foreign control of our assets. It was an ideology that saw us as workers not owners. It was an ideology that taught that people who look differently and come from abroad were better than we. [It] sought to keep us dispossessed and disenfranchised because at that time we did not have the right to vote,” the president said.
“If you equate the ideology of plantocracy with the State management of the industry today, then clearly you are missing the point. By contrast, [this Government, when the industry was under threat, made its single biggest investment in the Skeldon factory],” he said. “And we continue to make additional investment in sugar,” he said, adding that the Enmore Packaging Plant is another such example.
“I hope that the union is getting that idea that there is a difference [between plantocracy and the State management of the sugar industry],” the president pointed out, adding that with an unsympathetic government, sugar in Guyana would have gone the route of many of the other countries which decided to quit.
He said that the existence of the unions themselves would have been threatened without an industry to support them.
The president noted that the people who government put to head the corporation first have the support of the unions and then they are faced with difficulties afterwards. “We are not going to make the industry viable with all of the political commitment in the world if the turnout of labour is 42 percent,” he said. “[This industry] requires a true partnership to keep it alive,” he said.
He said that unions have to change and they can no longer be reactionary in their policies. “I dare say that this government has a closer connection to workers because its ministers go on the ground. We don’t have armchair ministers. You have some unions that have armchair leadership,” the president said.
Donald Ramotar, the PPP Presidential Candidate and the party’s General Secretary said that what happened at Enmore 63 years ago accelerated the formation of the PPP. Indeed, I see the Enmore Martyrs’ struggle as a continuation of the struggle that was started by the slaves and indeed that also took place in the sugar industry,” he said.
Ramotar noted that the 1763 uprising also took place at an important juncture “and I don’t believe Guyanese and other historians have given enough recognition to the importance of what took place here in 1763, when the slaves rose up and removed the oppression from off their backs. That event sparked a change in the world. It was the beginning of the end of slavery in the western hemisphere,” Ramotar said.
He noted that the Enmore martyrdom occurred at a time in the world when revolutions were the order of the day and spoke of India, China and Kenya being among the places of such struggles for independence and an end to oppression.