Holidays
Editorial
Stabroek News
May 9, 2003
On April 27, President Jagdeo told the Mela gathering at the Everest Cricket Ground that his party would support a parliamentary motion to have an Indian Arrival/Indentureship day in Guyana. An administration spokesman later clarified this by saying that the Government had yet to decide whether it would support a specific holiday for Indian arrival, or one Arrival Day which recognized the coming of all the various groups in the society.
The note of caution was introduced presumably because the administration saw itself facing demands for a series of 'days' if May 5 specifically were to be granted. Some representatives of other groups had already argued that if Indian cultural contributions were to be acknowledged, then by right those of other peoples should be too. As such, they proposed, it made more sense to settle on one Arrival Day for everybody - no matter how they came.
While it is true that there is no one cultural contribution inherently more or less valuable - as opposed to predominant - than another, the raw reality is that in terms of pressure group activity, the Indians have enormous clout by virtue of their numbers. And the question is, are they likely to be satisfied with an amorphous Arrival Day which belongs to everyone in general, and at the same time, to no one in particular. It has to be said that given the present mood, the odds are that they will not. And if the Government heeds their voice, then in due course they will have to give at least the Amerindians a day of their own, because they too probably will be able to exert enough pressure in the long run to corral the administration into making a concession after it has been made to the Indians.
What is unfortunate perhaps, is that the Indian pressure groups settled on arrival as their favoured date, rather than the end of indentureship. We already have Emancipation Day, which marked the final end of African slavery, and in a symbolic sense could be taken to encompass the end of Amerindian slavery as well, which the Dutch had abolished in Essequibo and Demerara, at least, some forty years before 1833.
Emancipation is one of the great historical milestones of this society, as is the termination of Indian indentureship in 1917 which signalled the end of all forms of legal bondage in Guyana. This date too, in a symbolic sense, could be said to encompass the Portuguese and the Chinese, who arrived here under the very same system. One might have thought that the end of indentureship - for which the Indian nationalists in India itself had campaigned - rather than arrival into servitude would have been the true cause for celebration.
Leaving aside cultural issues for the moment, one of the problems in Guyana is quite simply that we have more than enough holidays already. There are the two religious holidays each for the three major religions; there are the two secular holidays which exist in the penumbra of the two Christian holy days (Boxing Day and Easter Monday); and then there are the purely secular holidays of New Year's Day, Republic Day, May Day, Caricom Day and Emancipation Day. This makes a total of 13 in theory, although in practice, for the past few years the Government has been declaring Independence Day - May 26 - a non-working day as well, bringing us to a grand total of 14.
Given this kind of inflated number, it has to be recognized from a purely practical point of view that we cannot go on adding holidays ad nauseam - however deserving - without pruning some of those we have already. For a small underdeveloped society such as this one, 14 public days of rest must be taking their toll on the economy and more especially on the business sector. There is also the question of the distribution of the non-working days, which this year, at any rate, have clustered together in the fourth and fifth months with a late Easter being followed by May Day, then Youman Nabi and lastly, Independence Day. If we had had May 5 too (although it would not happen every year because the timing of Youman Nabi is variable) there would be four public holidays in May this year.
In addition to inflating the holiday calendar, the insinuation of May 26 into the complement has introduced a measure of confusion, insofar as we now have two flag-raisings, two Presidential addresses to the nation, etc. Its appearance as another non-working day is a symptom of our political divide, since Republic Day is associated with the PNC, while Independence Day has a greater resonance for the PPP. Mr Nascimento argued in a letter to this newspaper yesterday, that it should be transformed into Freedom Day, which would celebrate the end of British colonial policy which imported indentured labour, "and which designated our indigenous people to third class citizenship."
Whether it is decided to transform Independence Day, or whether it is resolved to retain its current status and add another holiday (hopefully only one of whatever character), then we should at least drop Caricom Day. Fifteen public holidays in an economically struggling society such as this one, would be unthinkable.
