The wrong message
Editorial
Stabroek News
September 10, 2002
In a letter published in the Sunday Stabroek of September l, 2002 Andaiye, David Hinds and Eusi Kwayana [ please note: link provided by LOSP web site ] said that they had long advocated power sharing but that they distanced themselves unequivocally from any scheme aimed at arriving at power sharing as a result of the calculated escalation of violence. They said that they opposed the view held by some African Guyanese extremists that violence would push the PPP in that direction for at least three reasons:
"First, it is immoral. Why should innocent people have to endure daily terror and rape and young people be turned into child-soldiers and spies in order to bring a government to its senses?
Second, it cannot hold water, since the more the violence, the more the PPP claims that there is no crisis in the country.
Third, the naked violence and inter-ethnic violence have already created a climate in which people are unwilling to trust one another and thus will be unwilling to seriously address sharing of power, which is so essential for human development in Guyana. Because of this we have an additional reason for opposing the present violence. If the situation continues, by the time we get to power sharing there will be no power to share, as political parties would be prisoners of violent extremists, criminals, and drug lords.
Today Buxton is a terror camp in which villagers have become prisoners. The psychological, social and cultural damage being done to that village surpasses anything since slavery, including the dreaded l960s".
The last sentence is of particular significance and is worth examining more closely. What is clearly being said is that the message that violent crime can be used to empower African Guyanese is not only the wrong message but can do enormous "psychological, social and cultural damage".
They went on to say: "As African Guyanese we urge Black People who are supporting the violence to stop confusing naked terror with our historical quest for freedom; and we urge Black people who mutter quietly that they oppose the violence to say so in a loud voice, because your public silence is encouraging the perpetrators of the violence and adding insult to the injury caused to the victims of the violence. Any freedom that any group seeks through the rape and murder of its fellow citizens, including some of its own race, can never be real freedom".
These are forthright and unequivocal statements. They provide the kind of clear moral leadership that has been sadly lacking on all sides. There are serious problems in Guyana but criminal violence cannot provide a solution and can only make them worse. The clarity of the letter is due to the fact that the writers are not afflicted by the defensiveness that has become so much a part of our ethnically based politics. They speak out in the interest of the nation without the limitations imposed by commitment to an ethnic group.
Indeed their statement fulfils the historic promise of the Working People's Alliance, the party of Walter Rodney, one of whose main objectives was to provide an alternative to ethnically based politics. Some have alleged that the traditions of the party have recently been compromised by some of its members and it must be noted that these three persons signed the letter on their own behalf and not as representatives of the WPA.
Mr Kwayana has taken the matter further. In "An open letter to the gunmen of Buxton/Friendship and to those who gave them guns" published in the Stabroek News yesterday he said that the Indians of Annandale or any other part of the country did not deserve the treatment being meted out to them. "It is sheer madness" he said, "Indians were not responsible for the enslavement of Africans. Get that straight".
The lack of a progressive vision for black Guyanese from traditional black leaders has created a vacuum now filled by radical and extremist elements. Let Andaiye, David Hinds and Eusi Kwayana speak again:
"The PNC, by not publicly breaking with those who have been pushing Black supremacy and violence and excusing murder, rape and mayhem as revolution, has contributed in no small way to the crisis.
This is no longer simply about politics and "marginalisation", it is about the destruction of the nation in the name of saving the nation or under the guise of seeking power for African Guyanese".
A recent letter from two senior PNC members, James Mc Allister and Sherwood Lowe, in which they disassociated the party explicitly from what was going on now, was encouraging, though as a letter writer in today's issue notes it did not acknowledge the instability created by the public political protests that have become endemic since l997.
"Let me tell you" Kwayana wrote to the gunmen, "that those who gave you guns know nothing about race relations in Guyana and its rights and wrongs. They pick up one thing here and another thing there. They are one sided and dangerous. I am well acquainted with their 5% truth standards".