MIKE Persaud probably had good intentions in hosting PNC leader David Granger and some other community activists for dinner and drinks on Saturday, May 31, 2014 at his house in Richmond Hill, New York.They chiefly wanted an apology from the PNC leader for nationwide PNC wrongdoings during that party’s 28 years in Government. This includes rigging elections, killing opponents, starvation, violence, raping of Indo-Guyanese women at National Service, discrimination etc.
Granger replied that the PNC and its leaders had done nothing wrong and there were no grounds for giving an apology. The PNC leader emphasised to his host, Mike Persaud, wife Indranee, Dr. Dolly Hassan, Mel Carpen, Chuck Mohan, Malcolm Harripaul, Tarron Khemraj, Danbaul Narine, Dr Tyran Ramnarine and others that his PNC party was multi-racial, and he rejected the opinion that Guyanese voted along racial lines.

But a PNC apology in no way resolves anything for Guyana’s historic ethnic dilemma. No one in that meeting living in America for many years apparently polled Granger’s reaction for a decentralised federal system for Guyana. Demanding and getting an abstract apology still leaves us with greater insecurities, which fuel our conflicts.

The urgency that fuelled ethnic interests is simply because Guyanese want racial security in all its forms. It was a surprise that most of Mike’s invited guests meeting with Granger, at his house in Queens, reportedly only concentrated their appeal for an apology. Guyana’s ethnic, political and cultural problems will likely find easier resolution within decentralisation than by window dressing.

In today’s Ukraine, its recently elected President, with all his military firepower, is actively pursuing a system of decentralisation to meet ethnic needs. It is time the leaders of Guyana entertain the concept of some kind of federal decentralisation.

The idea of one people, one destiny, and one love was a failure in Trinidad. UNC party leader Mr. Basdeo Panday allowed Mr. ANR Robinson, with only two Tobago seats, to become Prime Minister in a NAR Government. On taking office, Prime Minister Robinson completely isolated the UNC, forcing its pullout and the coalition’s collapse.

But Guyana already knows coalition Governments — as in the PNC-UF huddle — do not work.

No doubt, Mike’s dinner-hosting meeting with Granger’s entourage has attracted a firestorm of protests within the ‘Little Guyana’ Indo-Guyanese community in New York. Some residents have reportedly resolved to completely ostracizing Mike’s family in the area. Some are demanding that he relocate to Brooklyn and practise the racial message which he advocates. But this is not likely to happen in the near future.
During the PNC rule in Guyana, prominent PNC supporter Pandit Gowkarran Sharma, as well as a few New York Guyanese businessmen, were ostracized, and some went out of business.

Mike sincerely believes Guyana’s race problems will be solved by placing an Indo-Guyanese as PNC leader and an Afro-Guyanese as leader of the PPP/C. The problem with such a formula is that both major political parties do not accept or recognise that there is an ethnic/racial interest, separate from the nationalist interest in Guyana.

Considering that Mike spent his better days in New York City and has not experienced racism in other parts of America, despite electing a black President, he has also been long isolated from Guyana’s political pulse and its growing ethnic insecurities. One cannot afford to ignore that Guyana had a dominant multi-racial party fighting with a nationalist mission for national independence. As soon as independence became a reality, the national interests were replaced by racial and ethnic interests, which became paramount until it was changed in 1992.

The urgency of resolving Guyana’s problems is not a one-person, one-race, one-political-party duty. All Guyanese have such an obligation. Those problems will not go away by themselves.

Let us have an honest approach to dealing with Guyana’s ethnic problem as a priority.

VASSAN RAMRACHA