— New York Guyana Democracy Project
THE New York Guyana Democracy Project (NYGDP) has taken to task US Congressman, Hakeem Jeffries for startling comments he uttered at a Guyanese religious conference on June 11, 2022, in a Brooklyn church.
He pontificated: “… Not everyone in Guyana is treated consistent with the principles of equal protection under the law,” adding: “I will not tolerate racism in Guyana.”
The NYGDP said that these dogmatic remarks, made without the support of any evidence, are beneath acceptable norms of an elected member of a legislature. And it is most disappointing that they come from an elected person high in the Democratic Party of the US House of Representatives.
NYGDP is led by Dr. Tara Singh, former Senior Lecturer at UG.
The group pens: “As a political leader, we recognise Mr Jeffries’ right to speak out against any form of discrimination, including racism, wherever the evidence exists. What we disagree with is when distorted information and falsehoods are expounded, and no attempt made to get to the truth.
“Mr Jeffries does himself no good when he publicly acknowledges a New York-based racial provocateur as his close friend. We wonder if Mr Jeffries knows that a “wanted” bulletin has been issued by the Guyana Police for this provocateur!”
NYGDP adds: “We know that politicians tend to flourish in an environment of polemics and platitudes, but this approach must change as people are becoming smarter and looking for reason and evidence, and simultaneously rejecting emotional outbursts to explain situations. If Mr. Jeffries really wants to get a proper understanding of the situation in Guyana, we invite him to make a visit to our beautiful country.”
The organisation lists for the benefit of the Congressman and others factual social indicators pertaining to equality:
(1) With respect to poverty and inequality, both Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese, according to Professor Tarron Khemraj, have an almost similar level of poverty: Indo-Guyanese 30 per cent vs 31.6 per cent for Afro-Guyanese, and 33.7 per cent for the mixed races.
(2) There are limited data on income inequality: they are at the national level. The Ginni co-efficient for Guyana was 45 compared with Trinbago with a score of 39, and Barbados with a score of 40. (The lower the score, the better the income distribution). While the latter two countries have a better income distribution than Guyana, the difference is not significant. There was no score for individual ethnic group.
(3) For 28 years (1968-1992), the Afro-Guyanese based PNC/R had been in power and had failed to produce the good life for their supporters as well as other Guyanese. They regained power in 2015 and has had no transformative project to improve the lives of their supporters and others, even though they raised taxes, the equivalent to 1/3 the annual budget size. You should ask them what they did with the additional GY$90 billion in revenues per annum that they collected!
(4) The PNC/R received US$18 million as Exxon signing bonus and no one knows about the disposition of this sum.
(5) The PNC/R regime gifted a top GECOM official 200 acres of land as an apparent inducement to provide favourable 2020 election results. The PNC/R-aligned GECOM staffers were caught in bright daylight on TV trying to hijack the 2020 elections, when they blatantly falsified the electoral results for Region Four. Some of them have been indicted by the police for criminal conduct.
(6) It is important that you know that despite the Afro-Guyanese population account for only 29 per cent of the country’s population, they dominate every sector of the public service: they account for 75 per cent in the police force; 90 per cent in the Army; 95 per cent in prison; 70 per cent in public service; 80 per cent in nursing, and 65 per cent in teaching. During the PNC/R regime (2016-2020), they recruited 1,600 individuals into the army and over 80 per cent are Afro-Guyanese. At the University of Guyana, most of the students are Afro-Guyanese while 80 per cent of the academic staff are Afro-Guyanese.
The NYGDP pointed out to Congressman Jeffries that the PPP/C Government has embraced strong pro-equality practices and has set in motion a “One Guyana” policy to promote unity and self-respect among all Guyanese. Institutions have been established to support the One Guyana policy such as the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) which is designed to promote harmony among races and inquire into cases of racism. The PPP/C as a government has signed onto every major convention in the western hemisphere dealing with racial and other forms of discrimination. These conventions are now part of Guyana’s Constitution.
NYGDP’s President, Dr Singh asserted: “Let us be pellucid; we reject all forms of discrimination, including racism, and we join with the majority Guyanese people to subscribe fully to the “One Guyana” policy whose foundational principles are equity, fairness and justice. The Guyanese people are smart enough to understand issues and not to react to emotive outbursts. The days of race influencing voting patterns and race-induced violence are gradually coming to an end. Those with better ideas and issues will prevail; and those imprisoned by race victimisation theory would continue to languish and complain.”