GIHA PERSPECTIVE - 19TH December,2003

Guyana’s wishy-washy Government

It is Christmas, a season for much jollification so who can resist having a good laugh at the description of the PPP Government as “irresolute [synonyms for which are weak, wishy-washy, unsure, vacillating, indecisive]”, as reported by the World Bank? Words GIHA has used for the Government’s wishy-washiness include weak, sniveling, cowardly and spineless. The World Bank’s report on Guyana’s development policy is a vindication of all that GIHA has been saying for a year and more, and for which we withstood much abuse from the PPP and its Government. Guyana has a crisis of governance, the ethnic security issue is of primary importance, the PNC plays its own humbug politics, and it is time for a bridge of the ethnic political divide – shared governance – before Guyana slides further backward.

Word has come to us from Canada that the Tamil Tigers are also laughing at us, at Indian Guyanese. They have learned about the troubles faced by Indians in Guyana, and are laughing! Strong, dignified and courageous with leadership that supports and encourages these qualities, they laugh that a majority Indian population is allowing itself to get beaten up! When they learned that a government Indians vote for is in office, they laughed even harder at these wishy-washy “leaders”.

We deserve to be laughed at. We have turned away from all the lessons taught in the Gita, Quran and Bible about honour, dignity and courage to follow weak, sniveling leaders who insist that we be as cowardly as they. We have also given up Gandhian courage. Gandhi always said that if he had to choose between violence and cowardice to defend honour, he would choose violence. No good leader lets people be dishonoured and destroyed without at least defending them yet here we are in Guyana following people who do just that.

The Tamil Tigers and the Gurkhas of India are not from a different genetic strain than we are and it points to sinister work when a whole Indian population can be made docile and cowardly. Even up the 1960s Indians gave as good as they got in the racial riots so the current docility has to be a manufactured phenomenon.

The term “manufacturing docility” comes from Swami Aksharnanda’s paper of that name which was published in the GIHA Crime Report. In his paper, Swamiji showed how the PPP Government weakened Indians over forty years, and he denounced the nonsense that Indians are genetically docile people. Indians are dignified warriors when the occasion demands it, when their honour must be defended, but not in Guyana. Why?

When in mid-2002 GIHA helped a group in Annandale to print fliers for a public meeting to discuss the defence of the village, what happened? The PPP got wind of the proposed meeting and rushed in to tell Annandaleans to do nothing. “It go look bad,” the PPP bigwig told them. What did Annandale do? They did as the PPP told them – nothing - and continued to be beaten, robbed, raped and killed. The PPP’s “honour” was saved. Its supporters did not rise up to make demands. Indians are therefore willing to give up honour and be killed to save the PPP’s face, and the PPP thrives on this slavish loyalty.
Four years before, on January 12, 1998, Moses Nagamootoo, then Minister of Information, went on television and told Indians to bear all they could bear and take their licks quietly on a day when African Guyanese took to the streets to beat, rob and rape Indians. He now wants to be president!

The PPP wears 28 years of defeat at the PNC’s hands as its badge of “honour”. Defeat is its only victory because in 28 years it did not ever try to topple the dictator. The WPA led that fight and its leader died a hero in that struggle. But heroism is not the PPP’s strong suit. Run, take your licks, and live to tell the dishonourable tale - this is the cowardly PPP summed up.

There is a point in abusive relationships when the abused refuses to take any more. One would have expected Indians to have reached this point by now. In Georgia recently, the people overthrew an unpopular president. This would not happen in Guyana because Indians do not trust Africans and vice versa but it will be a starting point when Indians accept that the PPP Government is wholly responsible for the violence against them since Government is in charge of maintaining law and order and has failed miserably to carry out this most important mandate.

It will be a turning point when these heinous betrayers of all Guyana understand that everyone has had enough of their cowardice, weakness and abuse.

COMMENTS from Khem

Good article!! an excellent analysis of the current situation. It can 
be liken to the slaves who were freed in America but did not know how to 
defend that freedom. After over a hundred years it took Martin Luther 
King's wisdom to truly liberate them. I have said before the PPP is 
demonstrating the psychological effects of abuses. They need to know what 
the Pakis are doing to West Indian badjohns in London. Take no crap!!! 
 
Khem