News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. 23, 2015: Guyana’s ruling People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) seems to have come down with schizophrenia over the merger of Guyana’s two main opposition parties, the APNU and AFC, and is in panic. The two opposition parties formed a coalition and will contest the May 11, 2015 general elections as a single party.
The PPP’s panic is not misplaced. The coalition portends an end of the racist and corrupt PPP regime. Combined, the APNU and AFC garnered a majority of votes in the last general elections held in 2011. Consequently they captured control of the Parliament, rendering the PPP a minority government.
The PPP government is an ethnocracy. It practices institutional racism. Every elections cycle, the PPP exhibits bipolar behaviors. They act like they love Afro-Guyanese to trick us to support them, but we don’t vote for them because their policies tell us that they hate us. When elections are finished, they become triumphalists and implement policies that threaten our survival.
Now is election time in Guyana, and the PPP is again pretending that it loves black people. In reaction to the coalition of the two opposition multi-racial parties, the PPP, in a mad scramble to prop up itself, dumped its Afro-Guyanese Prime Minister, Sam Hinds – a notorious “house-slave,” and hastily selected Mrs. Elizabeth Harper – Director General of Guyana’s Foreign Service and Ambassador to Caricom, as its Prime Ministerial (PM) candidate.
Last Saturday Mrs. Harper, without resigning from the public service, appeared on the PPP’s platform with President Donald Ramator to declare her candidacy. She started off on the wrong foot. Her appearance was unlawful and demonstrates the PPP’s incessant disregard for the Constitution. It is a breach of public service laws for Mrs. Harper to be a candidate for the National Assembly while serving as Director General of the Foreign Service and an Ambassador. Mrs. Harper knows better and must comply with the law and resign.
Mrs. Harper had been a career diplomat of some repute. She has never overtly aligned herself with any political party. Her nomination to be the PPP’s PM candidate is therefore superficial. No one is oblivious to the certainty that she is marching to the tune of puppet masters and will become another Sam Hinds.
Her selection is an obvious hoax – designed to trick Afro-Guyanese and women to vote for the PPP. She is not a member of the PPP, nor its general council or its central executive committee. Like Sam Hinds, she will not be allowed to make any political and policy decisions.
Given its history, does the PPP expect us to believe that it will allow a political novice who is an Afro-Guyanese woman and a non-party member to take over the party and Presidency from President Donald Ramotar, if they win? Never! Elisabeth Harper will not be allowed to even take over a paper clip, much less the PPP leadership or Presidency. The day that happens, Jesus Christ will return.
The PPP thinks Guyanese have amnesia. They believe that we have forgotten how they eviscerated poor Prime Minister (PM) Sam Hinds when President Cheddie Jagan died and by constitutional mandate he ascended to the presidency. The constitution mandates that the Prime Minister shall become President if the President resigns, dies or becomes incapacitated. However, when President Jagan died while in office, the PPP made a mockery of the Constitution.
After Hinds became President, PPP insiders forced him to appoint President Cheddi Jagan’s wife, Mrs. Janet Jagan as Prime Minister. Once she became Prime Minister, they also forced Hinds to resign as President. He did so and Mrs. Jagan automatically became the President. She then immediately recreated the Vice Presidency and appointed Pandit Reepu Daman Persaud to that office, so as to dilute the powers of PM Hinds, whom she them reappointed. There is no doubt that these political gymnastics will again play out with Elisabeth Harper, should the PPP win. This is why Afro-Guyanese cannot fall for their trick.
Moreover, the PPP is playing “Russian Roulette” with the affairs of State of Guyana. Elisabeth Harper has no clue about running a country, although this is not alien to the PPP. She has not been a government Minister and never held any national policy making positions. She never made a single policy decision in her life, nor led any effort for social, economic or community development in Guyana. All she has done is follow orders all her career.
She has done nothing to improve the lives of women or Afro-Guyanese – the constituency the PPP wants her to court. Has she worked on the ground to help develop a single local community in Guyana? NO! Has she been involved in any community group to preserve any town or village? NO. Has she worked on the ground to improve the lives of women; including ending violence against women which is pervasive in Guyana? NO. Has she been involved in any women’s organization of any kind? NO.
Has she ever least spoken out against domestic violence or discrimination against women, or advocated for gender equality for women in Guyana? NO. Has she ever helped to improve the lives and education of young girls in Guyana? No. Has she done anything to address poverty or to preserve the human rights of Guyanese? NO.
If the PPP wins, under the law, the Prime Minister is also leader of government business in the Parliament. Again, Mrs. Harper has no experience Ministerial Cabinet or legislative expertise, and has no clue about Parliamentary procedure. This was also true of Sam Hinds when he commenced his tenure as PM, and is in part responsible for his disastrous tenure and led to his being a continuous laughing stock. It is therefore no wonder that another lightweight contender and non-serious person is taking over from Sam Hinds.
Elisabeth Harper implemented the PPP’s policy that jettisoned Afro-Guyanese from the Foreign Service. When we expressed outrage over the PPP’s all Indian Ambassador corps, and Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon said that there were no Afro-Guyanese qualified to be an Ambassador, Elisabeth Harper remained silent and went along with the pretense. She was made to appoint unqualified PPP supporters above qualified Afro-Guyanese. Of course she benefited directly from this PPP hegemony. She was the only Afro-Guyanese Ambassador who they retained at the time. This was her reward for cutting down her fellow Afro-Guyanese from the service. So how does the PPP expect her to now influence us, when they used her to disenfranchise us?
Mrs. Harper’s qualification to be Prime Minister is unknown. Clearly, her selection is cosmetic. Afro-Guyanese and women will not be tricked by Elisabeth Harper selection as the PPP’s PM candidate. This is a replica of Sam Hinds.
She cannot obfuscate the malignancy of racism in the PPP. Her selection cannot remove the PPP noose of racial discrimination which it has around the necks of Afro-Guyanese. Neither can it erase the PPP’s perennial racism against Afro-Guyanese. Racism and ethnic polarization are ensconced in the PPP’s DNA. It is reflected in every policy they espouse and implement.
The PPP’s declaration of a new found religion on racial parity is a hoax. They tried to pass this same joke on us when they invented Sam Hinds, but if the PPP were the movie “Ddjango Unchained,” Sam will be “Stephen” – the notorious house slave. When I see them using Elisabeth Harper to trick Afro-Guyanese and women to vote for the PPP, all I think about is “SAM HINDS”. Elisabeth Harper and Sam Hinds are ploys of the PPP’s bipolar disorder election scam. Dismiss them!
EDITOR’S NOTE: Rickford Burke is president of the Caribbean Guyana Institute of Democracy.
