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Apr 16, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Mr. Charrandas Persaud of the Alliance for Change had me once again as the guest last Tuesday evening on his Berbice television interview programme. The other two guests were Raymond Hall and Michael Carrington, both of the Alliance For Change. Charrandas asked all three of us to comment on the period of the PNC in government because he said in its election campaign, the PPP has completely blanked out the historic name of Desmond Hoyte.
Before we come to Hoyte, let’s go back to my visit to Black Bush Polder last Sunday night which formed the subject of my Tuesday column. As we drove into Yakusari, Dr. Ramayyah was speaking at the APNU-AFC public meeting.
There was this aging East Indian man, in his middle seventies, braced against a car very close to the speaker. He was engaged in a heated discourse with Charrandas.
I distinctly heard two remarks. He told Charrandas that the PNC Government destroyed everything (those were his exact words) and he advised Charrandas to think like an Indian. I won’t comment on the Indian remark because I don’t know what he meant.
But the observation on the PNC Government is typical of the PPP’s campaign and each time this distortion of Guyanese history is repeated by the PPP it should be confronted.
One of the youth leaders of the AFC, Leon Hunte, who was with me kept urging me to answer this aging gentleman and I did after I heard those two remarks. I told him he was a relic of the past and it was a complete waste of time to engage him in a conversation. The myth of PNC destruction has become the backbone of the PPP’s campaign strategy.
The object is to keep pounding in the ear of the average East Indian that the PNC Government did not develop Guyana. The historical record is a complete rejection of this fiction and educated Guyanese have to crush it.
There were two PNC Governments – the Forbes Burnham period and the Desmond Hoyte enlightenment. Both of these administrations did phenomenal things for Guyana.
Two success stories of Forbes Burnham have rubbished the twelve year reign of Bharrat Jagdeo. First, the University of Guyana is Forbes Burnham’s achievement.
Burnham took a part time university held up in the Queen’s College compound just months after Cheddi Jagan founded it and demitted office and made it into a top class institution at Turkeyen on a sprawling estate. UG is testimony to Burnham’s contribution to Guyana. What Burnham built, Jagdeo destroyed. UG is a virtual disgrace for an institution of higher learning.
Compare the Demerara Harbour Bridge built in the seventies to the pathetic piece of construction on the Berbice River and you can easily compare the record of Forbes Burnham and Bharrat Jagdeo. Mr. Jagdeo’s twelve-year rule was ugly and it is best personified in the ugly metal thing called the Berbice Bridge. The most horrendous dimension about this ugliness is Jagdeo’s passage which was built in the 21st century, yet it looks like it is from the 14th century.
Back to Desmond Hoyte – all three of us on that programme contexualized the democratic governance of Desmond Hoyte. We informed Berbicians that it was Desmond Hoyte who opened up the economy, brought back banned food items and democratized the Guyanese society.
It was important to inform Berbicians that on the level of morality, when the PPP Government is juxtaposed against the Hoyte administration, it is like Dracula versus Mother Theresa. Mr. Hoyte was a severe disciplinarian. He interdicted high PNC and Governmental officials who were accused of wrong-doing of which the Rabbi Washington prosecution stands out.
The Jagdeo/Ramotar combination could easily be regarded as the most morally depraved period in West Indian history. The past fifteen years in the exercise of power has seen the descent into the cesspool of moral filth where men and women wearing coercive authority on their shirt-sleeve wallow in perverted, violent behaviour that would not be tolerated even in brutal military dictatorships
I wrote three times in these columns and repeated it in an interview programme with Chris Ram as the host, that I honestly believe that type of immoral and obscene conduct in government that we have in Guyana under both Jagdeo and Ramotar, Adolph Hitler would not have tolerated among his elite circle.
Both Burnham and Hoyte were purists in this regard. As the PPP continues with its caricatured version of the PNC in government, those in the Guyanese society who can articulate the facts of history must present an alternative discourse to the Indian people to whom this caricature is directed in order to win votes.
Jagdeo giving Exxon 102 cent to collect 2 cent.
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