SAMUEL Hinds serves his fellow Guyanese with outstanding distinction, and played a powerful, pivotal role in working alongside Dr. Cheddi Jagan to restore free and fair elections to this country, after 28 years of rigged elections under the People’s National Congress (PNC), with Hamilton Green, a senior PNC leader of that nefarious PNC period. Yet, Green and a few of his cohorts, in spouting ethno-racist sentiments about Hinds’ leadership, had the temerity to try to besmirch the character of a Guyanese of exceptional class and excellence. Every Guyanese knows of Hinds’ brilliant, heroic service to the nation. All Guyana would stand up to applaud Hinds, a leader of the gentlest of nature, who demonstrates his love for Guyana with great service to the people. Hinds served as Prime Minister from 1992 to 2015, and his leadership makes for remarkable heroism in the annals of Guyana’s history.

Hamilton Green also served as Guyana’s Prime Minister, under the PNC regime, and Green could, in absolutely no way compare his leadership and his historical legacy with that of Samuel Hinds. Under Green’s PNC leadership, the nation suffered shocking socioeconomic collapse, by 1990 ranking with Haiti as the poorest country in the Americas. Yet Green shockingly accuses Hinds of sectarian isolationism. So much is wrong with Green’s perspective of Guyana that one wants to ignore his diatribe. However, the historical record must be set straight, and Green’s efforts to warp history would not be allowed to go without correction. As the national newspaper, it is imperative that the Guyana Chronicle set the national record straight concerning Green’s ethno-racial denunciation of Hinds’ exemplary leadership for all Guyana. Both Hinds and former President Donald Ramotar wrote letters to the newspapers concerning the Green rhetoric; it is laudable that they both did so, because the nation cannot ignore an attempt to warp Guyanese history and distort Hinds’ leadership excellence.

Guyana would forever stand up for Samuel Hinds. When the PNC was dragging this country to its knees, Hinds courageously stood up, risking his job at the Linden bauxite mining company, Guymine, to become a leader in the movement for democracy, the Guyana Action for Reform and Democracy (GUARD). Hinds led this national civic organisation, and an alliance of labour unions into a democratic partnership that restored free and fair elections to Guyana.
Today, Guyana stands on the cusp of global success, of becoming a country of well-developed socioeconomic means, of achieving its long-delayed potential. And the role of Sam Hinds as Prime Minister of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) governments, under four presidents, and serving as President himself, played the most vital function in Guyana being where it is today. When the Coalition Government tried to sully Guyana’s democratic reputation last year, Hinds came out of retirement to march and speak out against the attempt to upturn Guyana’s democratic structure.

Green wrote a letter that was published in a national newspaper, where he wrote about Hinds: “I … publicly ask him when he held the highest office in this land, and the second highest, what did he do to really lift up the Afro-Guyanese?”  That strange sectarian question, which rings of a narrow parochial ethno-racial overtone, mirrors the question from another commentator, Lincoln Lewis, who wrote in a letter published in the national press that Hinds should “…show this nation what he has done for the African community…” When national figures and public leaders with some influence over a constituency make such statements, the nation cannot ignore the harsh sectarian rhetoric and move on, but must nip it in the bud before it breeds discontent, hatred, and sow unnecessary division and deep schism in the body politic. Hinds is an intellectual, and is well able to answer these shallow questions. In an excellent letter to the newspapers, he set the record straight about his role in improving Guyana for every citizen, writing:

“Through our sequence of thoughtful budgets and programmes, we, Guyanese of all races, of all religions and from all regions of our country, were enabled to increase our average GDP ten-fold; from an average of US$300 per person in 1992, to about US$3,000 in 2015, even in the presence of a long period of persistent attempts aimed at fomenting ethnic strife amongst us. All our peoples and communities were much better off in 2015 than they were in 1992.” Hinds shows his class and worth as a national leader, because he sees his fellow citizens not according to the colour of their skin, but rather by the oneness of the nation. He sees all Guyana, not a section of the six-race nation as more important than another. The era and generation of the Hamilton Greens and Lincoln Lewises is a thing of the past. It is a new day; the dawn of the Guyana that every Guyanese dreams of, and as the nation accelerates its socioeconomic well-being, such narrow viewpoints will fade into the dustbin of history. However, in portraying that history of this great nation, it is fruitful to lift up leaders like Samuel Hinds, and showcase their exceptional value, and make sure narrow-minded parochial souls cannot damage their historical legacy. Samuel Hinds is one of the greatest sons of the soil, because he cares about all Guyana.