David,

Please find some links on information protesting what is happening in Guyana and alternative opinions to Barbados immigration

Open letter to Caricom Heads

Caribbean Congress of Labour condemns reaction to Barbados immigration decision

We are more enslaved now than before

Democracy is built not only on free elections, but on justice and human rights

Guyana Migration has the characteristic of a humanitarian crisis

Office of the President attracts another protest

Click on button top right of this page or on the feedback option top of page.

The points raised about Guyana merit attention. Caricom leaders know Guyana is in crisis. A failed state but I guess they don’t want to interfere.

It brings us to the next point. If they don’t interefere the problem of Guyana will become the problem of Caricom. We saw Jagdeo, Ramphal, Singh, Faria and Bourne angry reaction to B’dos enforcing immigration laws and offering amnesty. These people are threatening B’dos way of life and laws.

Don’t you think the time is now for Caricom citizens to demand governments intervene to correct Guyana’s problem since these problems-(racism, poverty, anti-social beahviour, drugs) are exported and destroying the island way of live, economy and values?

2. The human rights and political atrocities committed by the Guyana government are well known to Caricom and the international community. The political opposition in Guyana has been emasculated. It is very weak and impotent, mainly because Corbin has been allegedly bought out, according to the people. Corbin is compromised and corrupt. He depends on Jagdeo for financial resources to run his opposition leader’s office. Jagdeo recently had his MP pass a special bill designating more recourse to Corbin.

3. Hoyte never received any government resources to execute his functions as opposition leader. But then Hoyte never did the Texas two-step with Jagdeo and the PPP. Corbin does the Two-step and the tango with them. And so as to avoid challenge, he has driven out all of the youth and intellectuals out of the party. What is left of the PNC is mainly the hard core Corbin brigade, which attempts to destroy anyone who attempts to challenge him. But he has to go as he commands absolutely no respect in Guyana. He is seen as a PPP/Jagdeo puppet who has soled out his constituency for “thirty pieces of silver.”

4. The PNC as it is presently constituted and managed cannot win a general election. The party under Hoyte and Burnham was truly a multi-racial/multi-ethnic party that was a microcosm of the wider Guyanese society, while the PPP was always an Indian Party, with five or six blacks, who joined because they were basically disenchanted with the PNC or Burnham. To this day the PPP remains just that. As a government, it is a repressive ethnocracy, which fundamentally usurps the resources of the state, almost exclusively for the Indian collectivity.

5. NGO’s in Guyana are harassed, intimidated blackmailed and get their funds taken away when ever they complain about the PPP government. Under the PPP Guyana has become a Stalinist society, more like “animal farm.” Civil society organizations do make recommendations to Caricom. They have been doing this for several years and have been ignored. The need the political backing of the opposition, which Corbin does not permit, for the most part. The civil society organizations presented a petition to the Caricom heads in Georgetown last week, but the PNC’s name was absent. Plus they held a protest outside the meeting. During the picket, Corbin was seated inside applauding Jagdeo. There goes the picture.

6. Our group, CGID, has made representations on atrocities in every international forum imaginable; Caricom, the OAS, UN, American Human Rights Court, UNHCR, Committee Against Torture, the US State Department, US Congress, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International.

7. I know most of the Caricom leaders and enjoy very good relations with them. CGID has honored some. I have written the leaders personally on every political and human rights matter which has emerged in Guyana. They sympathize with Guyanese and some have taken action, (Manning, Gonsalves, etc). But generally speaking, they are reluctant to intervene. Most of them have their own political problems and don’t wish to establish a precedent of intervention in what they see as, or claim to be, a member state’s domestic political affairs, except in extreme circumstances; less it comes back to haunt them.

8. On the developmental front, Guyana has made serious blunders; geo-strategically, politically and developmentally. The country, seventeen years ago, underwent a fundamental misfortune, when the PPP “happened” to accede to power. I sincerely believe that they had no vision for the country and certainly lacked the intellectual and strategic depth to grasp the developmental needs (infrastructural, economic and social) of the country and thus, could not and still have not engaged in forward thinking and planning, for sustained national development.

9. The World Bank, the PNC, IMF, etc., helped them develop a national development strategy several years ago. The processed failed due to political bickering but out of it emerged a road map. But implementation is stalled. Honestly, I doubt that they even know how to read the plan.

10. If you analyze Guyana’s developmental path you will easily realize that the country has not really developed beyond where Forbes Burnham, with all its faults, brought it. Even the Berbice Bridge that Jagdeo built suffers from ancient engineering technology – metal spans on floating pontoons. A floating bridge in this day and age? Does the country have the capacity to maintain it? NO. They cannot even maintain the Demerara Harbor Bridge, which is a disaster waiting to happen.

Guyana, by the way, is not in the West Indies or the Caribbean. But it had to supposedly join Caricom because, at the time, the world was morphing/merging into mega geo-political and trading blocks. Caricom seemed to have been the only way to go then, especially culturally as Guyana was out of sync with South America in every way. Unfortunately, we lacked the foresight to see Brazil as an emerging major world economy, and hence align our strategic national interest accordingly. Hoyte, Manning and some other South American leaders had pushed the Association of Caribbean States, which is basically Caricom plus Latin America, but it hasn’t worked.

But even the road to Brazil which was Desmond Hoyt’s project, would not bring much “legitimate” economic activity to Guyana at this time; although the drug dealers would benefit enormously – some people believe this would include some of the PPP boys. Why? There is no vision for economic development along that corridor.

We all know the age long adage/proverb/revelation: “where there is no vision, the people perish.” Guyanese and Guyana have perished!

Rickford

Has there been any professional poll conducted by political parties or interest groups in Guyana to judge public opinion? If not why not?

Has the Jagdeo government declared a national strategy document on how they have/will move the country forward socio-economically?

Have the political parties in waiting done the same?

Reading your comments over the months on the conditions in Guyana we are forced to ask the hard questions:

Why if these atrocities perpetrated by the PPP are known could you explain why this matter would not be raised at the Caricom level by the opposition, NGOs and other stakeholders in Guyana?

Did we not read somewhere that in 2009 the Guyana press received a fairly decent rating? If we recollect clearly it was up there with Barbados.

If what you are purporting to be happening is true in Guyana why is the Afro-bent Corbin led party not more vocal, traveling the Caribbean building a case?