Dear Editor
READING the exchanges between GAWU’S Seepaul Narine and the GTUC’S Lincoln Lewis on matters pertaining to the sugar industry once again exposes the same old dishonest attempts by the PPP/C and its shameless mouthpieces in deflecting blame, accepting both administrative and moral responsibility, and covering up for the biggest industrial debacle in our time.
For me, as I have repeated ad nauseam, the issue of the collapse of this once economic contributor, and the Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar PPP/C- former regimes in its decline and eventual death that would have affected the livelihoods of so many, remains the most vexed issue, for the scale of the obnoxious lies that have been deployed towards absolving itself from being accountable.
Editor, for Narine to attempt to weave a claim that sought to absolve the workers having to seek the legal avenue against the government, because it was led by Bharrat Jagdeo, while laying it on GAWU, could not have been obscener as it is patently dishonest. It is another sickening example of shielding and defending the maximum leaders of the party from defending their stewardship on matters pertaining to GuySuCo.
What a tangle web he is trying to weave, to deceive supporters of the party, and the nation in general. It goes without any form of debate that any case workers’ legal action for severance that originates from employment with a state entity, is one brought against the State. Thus, Narine is demonstrating in the most misleading and deceptive ways how to defend the indefensible.
One would have read the outspoken trade union leader, Lewis’s appeal to his colleague union leader, for a joining together to work for the best interests of the nation’s workers. Of course, it is the ideal of trade unionism as it is about common ideals – advancing the interests of their workers, especially as this auspicious imminence of oil and gas industry beckons. One should not doubt Lewis’s sincerity as a tireless representative and fighter for workers’ rights in Guyana, irrespective of political affiliation or ethnicity. He has an established track record, with the results as evidence.
However, given the PPP/C historic record of patent partisanship, as exemplified by its throwing of the RUSAL workers under the bus some years ago; and GAWU’s silence as Jagdeo sent the Linden township into a depressed state by closing Linmine, such a challenge would seem to be beyond Narine and GAWU’s answer to the higher ideal of the workers’ greater good. They are too steeped in ethnic partisanship, which should have no place in trade unionism.
Regards
Earl Hamilton
