Years ago I responded to Dr. Prem Nisir on the question of marginalisation; I sent the letter to the media who never published it. I was told that there were loads of letters (which was true) and they would get to it, but it was never published. This article improves on that letter to articulate both reality and misconceptions. Marginalisation in the normal context is interpreted by several existing case studies that cannot be refuted. The Hindu caste system as defined by V.T Rajshekar in his book on the untouchables “The six cardinal principles of the philosophy of the Brahmins are: Graded inequality among the different classes; Complete disarmament of the Shudras and the untouchables; Complete prohibition of the education of the Shudras and the Untouchables; Ban on the Shudras and Untouchables occupying high places of power and authority; Ban on the Shudras and the Untouchables acquiring property; Complete subjugation and suppression of women.” Next, we turn to the Gaelic (French) and Anglo Saxon (English) invasions of the Celtic (Irish and Scots) Isles (England) whose rights were reduced in a historical context to not use their language, their instruments and music, their names, their right to property, and for the Kilt wearing Scottish clans, their kilts – National Geographic March 2006. The latter sounds familiar, as during the Atlantic Slave Trade similar impositions were imposed upon our African ancestors, with an even stronger group of bias beginning with the complex European memory of the Moorish conquests and occupations of Southern Europe for 800 years and the defeat of repeated Crusades, thus, justifying the heathen ‘Demi-moor’ reserved for non-Muslim Africans was a self-esteem building Christian act (though Christianity was practised in Africa before Europe adopted it). Thus, came the Euro-realisation that the salvation of Europe through Christianity was through an African-Hebrew script, which we today call ‘The King James Bible’ so there had to be a justification for slavery and separation from the African world of the Bible and the African in slavery, so the myth of ‘Noah’s curse’ was manufactured, and the Europeanisation of the Bible completed.

In Guyana, marginalisation has manifested with some difference. Whether it was colonial spite or just economic expediency, we are yet to verify. Post emancipation saw the eclipse of the self-created freed African business sector by the planter/merchant class (the plantocracy) and the African entrepreneurial space allotted to the Portuguese, who were dying in rapid numbers on the plantation and felt honoured as Europeans to be included in the local creole white family. The real reason, however, lay in driving the African back into the fold of the plantations; it didn’t work and eventually, the Portuguese soon recognised that they too felt the marginalisation from the Nordic European group. Cultural and philosophical opposing extremes arrived in Guyana within the reality of the core values that enveloped emancipation, and those that were imported with indentureship. Values and belief systems, how the group worldview was interpreted with different understandings of the sacred and the profane, this contrast is what constitutes the pretext of a shared governance platform because its innate prejudices surface in conflict with holistic realities.
In Stabroek News, July 5, 2020, one of that newspaper’s more popular writers, Mike Persaud declared that “Rationale for shared governance no longer exists”. His argument was based on an opposition platform and the probability of wider voter choice and not the concept of meritocracy and the ‘partition creeds’. I wrote about on Sunday 28, June 2020, in the Sunday Chronicle. Mike’s letter was a simplification of what shared governance and the intent to restrict the complex labyrinth of marginalisation really entails. To extract a political candidate whose formative and adult environment was never exposed to miners, pork-knockers, suppliers into those landings and townships or lived in that vicinity and have no family links to that world, and then place him or her in charge of GGMC will lead to the kind of cluelessness that will be subject to manipulation by some clever vizier and eventual mismanagement. This applies to every government organ and productive programme, including understanding niche small business support like the Arts and other IPR related productive areas.

It has gone beyond argument that marginalisation does not always stem from nefarious intent, but is also a product of immensely square plugs that cannot fit into round, oval or oblong required situations. The Shared Governance proposal that ACDA and other groups evolved with, also take into consideration stakeholder involvement in areas that do not have fixed study templates that a Permanent Secretary or Minister can in two nights evolve with a preliminary awareness rather than an understanding of the subject, and can then make mistakes, frustrate, delay and Marginalise, until if ever an understanding is arrived at. That Shared Governance is a mandate of compulsory collaboration and construct of methodologies from industry practitioners towards a clear exchange on sound all-round principles. That the ‘Shared Governance’ is necessary in a changing world to help eliminate “Marginalisation” that flourishes through ignorance have become obvious, and through numerous case studies that can be cited, pronounces on a fact of practised dysfunctional-ism, especially effective against medium and small businesses.
If you take a long time loyal party member who is an impressive rabble-rouser, and place that person in charge of your Foreign Service or Public Service then the failures of those services and all that extends from it cannot be blamed on that person, because it’s your act of marginalising that individual, who is out of his/her league, and the damage caused through guessing and acts committed through feelings rather than the confidence of institutional knowledge, is all on you, and the nation is thus, through the domino effect- Marginalised.