Dear Editor,

David Hinds in his long letter 'A beast that asks no quarter, and gives none' in Stabroek News (6.9.2001) gave us a long story about someone attempting to rent a house in Georgetown, our capital city, the racial composition of which is predominantly Afro-Guyanese and long considered a PNC stronghold.

In the 1994 local government election the GGG led by Mr Hamilton Green a former PNC Prime Minister won 12 seats, the PNC won 10 seats and the PPP/Civic won 8 seats for the city of Georgetown.

According to Mr Hinds' story the agents called the prospective renter to find out the ages of their children before the scheduled visit to the first house and although the children's ages were within the age stipulation felt there was still a problem as the owners did not want to rent to "Negroes." The agent went on to disclose that one of the houses available for rent was owned by African Guyanese and as such that one would not be problematic.

Unfortunately, David Hinds after sharing all this and more information with us did not disclose which house the renter was able to obtain, if any, but perhaps he'll share this information with us in a follow-up letter.

On this alleged isolated incident only Mr Hinds says that this is apartheid because both Blacks and Indians who are in or near to the real estate business have said in conversation that the case he highlighted did not seem to be isolated.

But let's hear Mr Hinds as he goes on to ask the following questions in his next paragraph, which to my mind clearly shows his bias and his private political agenda and I quote:

"Who are these landlords? Is the behaviour typical of Indian behaviour? What are the implication for race relations in Guyana? What are the political implications?"

This well-known proponent of power sharing wants us and the public to conclude that this alleged behaviour would be typical of Indians only thus portraying his bias against Indians.

To balance out his letter he reminded Africans of the recent campaign by some of their advocates who called on them to boycott Indian businesses.

But there is no scathing attack by Mr Hinds on this campaign which was openly carried out in the electronic media by certain talk show hosts, and of course he doesn't call it apartheid.

He mildly states that "This boycott call was in the minds of its advocates defensive, in that it is an expression of African self-reliance and is a response to Indian triumphalism. Every group in society has a right to find legitimate ways of fortifying itself, especially in a situation of inter-group conflict... "

Here we have a comparison of an alleged private incident in regard to the renting of a house and a public call on the television media for Africans to boycott Indian businesses, and Mr David Hinds' one-sided and clearly biased interpretation so that he can continue to push his case for power sharing.

Mr Hinds must be made to realise that you can fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.