Dear Editor
ANYONE who read my letter (Guyana Chronicle March 12, or on March 17, 2019 in Kaieteur News ‘The ethnic security dilemma from a personal experience’ in response to Baytoram Ramharack’s letter on February 18 in the Stabroek News, would ponder on the references to that letter by Freddie Kissoon in his column on March 18, in Kaieteur.

His article was not enhanced by distorting, misrepresenting and with intent falsifying content that I had possibly written over time in several articles, each time with historical references, and not my imagination, because I suffer from no mental aberrations.

I declared that from all records between the PPP and the PNC ethnic constituencies that the Afro-Guyanese had more to fear from the PPP in power than Indo-Guyanese from the PNC in power with respect to the ethnic security dilemma. The text is available to all, as are the arguments to support what I said. However, I should reiterate, with further clarifications, because this kind of debate will not be diminished unless conversation is conducted to eliminate the ‘political stock arsenal of falsifications and part truths’ as I used in my letter concerning the 1973 election incident.

I am not trained in politics; instead I am trained enough in research and cross- research towards the verification of facts, which include understanding influences of cultural and religious platforms and political manipulation of the same. During the 60s, I lived with my God-parents at Mahaica. I can recall neighbours across ethnic groups in that area coming together to keep watch against intruders who were from either ethnic group entering their space. I and other male children kept watch near to the food, and read comic books by lamplight, as no electricity existed in the area. To us, it was a manly adventure. When a relative came from ‘town’ to take me to ‘safety’, I was allowed to make my choice, and I refused. My godfather was a plumber, and I recalled the quiet conversations on the ‘specs’ for ‘pipe guns’ with bucket handle triggers in response to the high-powered weapons

smuggled up the Mahaicony Creek from the Caribbean by a certain political party, and what happened at Mahaicony. I knew where the impetus of the Ethnic Security Dilemma lay. Now, I will extract from one of numerous public records to verify my conclusion on matters in the 1960s, pg 108 Guyana Democracy Betrayed, by Jai Narine Singh “Jagan had by now lost his main militant supporters, and had himself become a kind of dictator governing the affairs of Guyana as lord and master of it all. He organised protest demonstrations in several parts of the country in the course of which Afro-Guyanese were killed and murdered.

This resulted in a chain reaction, organised by the PNC and their supporters, that led to mass killings, lootings and burnings and migration. Indo-Guyanese moved away from the villages where they were the minority, and the Afro-Guyanese moved away from those where they were the minority. And to a second reference in the same book pg 221 as follows: “There is a voluntary segregation now taking place in many areas throughout the country. There is widespread lawlessness, and an almost complete breakdown of law and order. The group responsible for starting the events leading up to a breakdown of law and order is the Peoples Progressive Party.” [Incidentally, Jai Narine Singh is the father of Robin Singh, the opposition leader’s apprentice].

The recent years, from 1992 onwards, speak for itself in murders, drug addiction and the criminalisation of the Sstate as the ‘DOSSIER’ demonstrates. I respect your adding to the public conversation the terminology of ‘Ideological Racism’ and providing evidence of its mechanisms; you even provided in your column evidence of early post-1992 sabotage directed at the Afro-Guyanese UG hierarchy.

In your court testimony, you said, “From historical data, Afro-Guyanese, he said, maintained an existence with administration of the State, including State activities, education, the Arts and related activities. With this, Kissoon said, came Afro-Guyanese power, authority and influence, while the more land and property- based Indo-Guyanese derived their power from their physical possessions and wealth.” You continued with a convincing argument of a callous usurpation of the said ‘Plural model’ this “fundamental shift was pregnant with disastrous possibilities.” So, am I wrong to say that the PPP poses more of a threat to Afro-Guyanese than the PNC to Indo-Guyanese? I will not deal with aspects of the ‘Plural model’ that I have reservations about, but I would implore you to explain how could you produce such grounded evidence then agree with the same Bharrat Jagdeo on denying the proponents of the Afro-based Arts the human right of Copyright?

The facts are that as long as political columnists fail to recognise the dishonesty in the management of the expertise that must be developed into earnings, we will not evolve with mutual respect and absence of suspicion. For example, the contempt that the opposition leader treats the sugar workers with as current political cannon fodder, after knowing their fate since 2004, misusing monies received in their interest and shamelessly blaming the current administration and talking about theories alien to his nature like the Constitution and morality? The writers who conspire to feed from the tainted no-confidence motion must come to terms with the fact that one cannot corrupt the law of perception and call it right. Here, my brother, is where the gauntlet rests. Our problem before Independence was ‘Bread & Butter’; and it still is. We do not manage our expertise well.

I did not see the advocates of the Ethnic Security Dilemma step forward to raise a regiment to be deployed on our western border, nor on our eastern border when Suriname and Venezuela were breathing heavily against us. No, they slithered back into their safe crevices. And I heard not a whisper. Did you?
Regards
Barrington Braithwaite