Guyanese are beginning to protest again
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
May 6, 2007
For many years now, in several columns of mine, I frontally criticised Mr. Mike McCormack and the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) for neglecting the smaller, but nevertheless important violations of basic rights. When a detailed and insightful history of the role of the combined opposition to the 28 years of PNC rule is written, the objective writer will have to acknowledge the helpful and important role of the Guyana Human Rights Association.
The crucial role of the GHRA during the dictatorial slide of the Forbes Burnham regime was that it could have talked to strategically placed actors in Ottawa and Washington , DC that Jagan could not have had an audition with because of his open embrace of communism.
At one time during the internal confabulations within the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy, Jagan had insisted on a national patriotic government but only if it had adopted a socialist programme.
Against this communist persistence of Dr. Jagan, people like Mike Mc Cormack and Father Morrison could not have engaged governmental figures within the Canadian and US administrations to pressure Burnham and Desmond Hoyte. Later, Mr. Yesu Persaud of GUARD joined the trips to the western capitals to seek international help for the return of a free ballot.
There is something about this period that has not been written about before. Father Andrew Morrison was facilitated in seeing Senator Edward Kennedy because Kennedy's secretary was disposed to Father talking to the senator. Many times Dr. Jagan sought to speak to Kennedy but didn't make it.
These are missing links in Guyanese history that East Indian people who worship Jagan as a Guyanese liberator ought to know. Today, a significant number of East Indians, particularly those that had migrated after the seventies, still harbour the illusion that Jagan and the PPP brought back an open, free society.
Obviously, there cannot be a denial of the vast role the PPP played in the struggle for the end to colonialism and for the return of democratic rights during the autocratic ways of Forbes Burnham. But in the long days and endless nights in that large period of confrontation, some crucial actors emerged and weakened Guyanese authoritarian rule. That is why we have free and fair elections in Guyana today.
The sooner the East Indian supporters of the PPP realise this, the quicker will be a more understandable discourse between the PPP and opposition groups currently opposed to the PPP's oligarchic descent.
The GHRA, then, was no footnote in the long battle against an unelected government. What happened after 1992, when the PPP began to govern without recognition of those that had helped Guyana and when the PPP became to use power in ways that so closely resemble the Burnham approach was that the GHRA got fixated on the larger constitutional and political issues.
The GHRA had abandoned its human rights cause. In one column on this unwise direction the GHRA went into, I made the point that had the GHRA stuck with its main agenda of fighting against all types of violations, then maybe C.N. Sharma would not have attained the social penetration that he has at the moment.
What happened after 1992 was that with the weakening of the WPA and the GHRA's obsession with macro issues, poor, helpless Guyanese victims had nowhere to go. When they were oppressed by large, powerful institutions, their only avenue was C.N. Sharma.
In a second article attacking the GHRA, I cited myself as an example of the barrenness of the GHRA. All types contacted me to assist in the exposures of the wrongdoings that were meted out to them. But no one person can undertake human right causes. Fighting human rights issues on an individual level has a financial cost attached which I cannot afford.
For fifteen years (as long as the PPP is in government), I have criticised the GHRA for its neglect of the cause of the small people. At last, the GHRA has acknowledged that its essential role revolves around human rights despite its interest in large, political developments like shared governance and constitutional reform.
There are two stories with which the GHRA has become intertwined, and the Guyanese society has taken an active interest in both of them. The first one was a criminal and sexual attack on an Amerindian family outside the Sheriff Night Club after its members had left the club over an incident that had occurred inside.
Of course, the proprietor of the entity said it was not her entertainment centre that the family had patronised and that the family made a mistake about which club it was. The GHRA and the family maintain it was the Sheriff. It was a semi-civilised form of brutality.
In view of scores of bystanders, the family was robbed, beaten and the female members sexually assaulted. The GHRA got involved by publicising the incident. It held a picketing exercise outside the night club. It was nice to be in the line again with Mike Mc Cormack, Andaiye, the Radzik sisters and many others who frequented the picket line during the opposition to the PNC during the era of rigged elections.
The GHRA has taken up the cause of six dismissed persons from the Republic Bank. This marks the second time in a month that the GHRA has gone into the arena of rights violations to assist ordinary folks whose fundamental rights have been denied them. One hopes that the GHRA will stay on this course.
The culture of protest is creeping back in to Guyanese society. The TUC has aggressively engaged Republic Bank's hierarchy on the unjust dismissal. The TUC organised a protest line outside the bank on two occasions. I missed both because I was home-moving.
The Republic Bank imbroglio would have attracted national anger in the sixties. Unions and other groups would have voiced their concern. The culture of protest survived even under the harshness of the Burnham days. The PPP, WPA, and other organisations would have shown their vexation. Ironically, fifteen years after the return of democracy, the culture of protest lies dormant.
The signs are there that we are beginning again to show some decent instincts against the mounting wrongs that characterise Guyana . Let the train of protest roll on. Jump on board everyone! A country where its people do not protest will never survive.