The Alliance For Change (AFC) in its weekly ‘Alliance On the Move’ recently hosted a special programme on race relations and possible solutions, featuring two very prominent Guyanese men, Dr. Kimani Nehusi and AFC Leader and Member of Parliament Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan,
The January 28th episode hosted by attorney-at-law Mr. Nigel Hughes was due to significant demand for a follow-up to one streamed/held three weeks prior that discussed the issue with Professor Nehusi. The public felt the discussion was incomplete.
Hughes, in pointing out that the question of race has loomed large in Guyana, stated “before we started talking about national politics back in the 1950s, you may recall in the last programme Professor Nehusi, spoke a lot about the genesis of this race challenge that continues to perpetuate and continues to affect our political life.”
Both men were asked to describe the state of race relations in Guyana today.
Ramjattan said the 2023 Budget scenario provided him a more pronounced sentiment as to what basically, at the economic and policy level, is the state of affairs of race relations in Guyana. He further said that he spoke about the situation during his debate presentation and indicated the situation was not very good.
During his presentation the Member of Parliament told the House he could not support the Budget because “there is no planning, there is no targeting, there is no output, and the budget is pathetically poor. A PPP ethically poor policy.”
Going further, Ramjattan shared his concern that the Budget “has all the hallmarks of ensuring a disproportionate distribution of our oil and gas funding [and] We are now waging a serious psychological battle as to the resentments that will be coming.” He warned: “We are in an explosive situation!”
On the panel he reminded of his parliamentary presentation and stated that there have been certain policies in the budget, and a continuation of some, which indicate that there is a propensity of our present government to ensure a certain discriminatory impact in relation to the bounty that we now have.
“And that has to do with the oil monies and to the extent that was largely in my head over the past week. I will put it. I’ll deal with it a little more, but I will say that it is not really a good platform.”
The party leader claimed too many of the government-financed reliefs are being distributed in a discriminatory fashion and too many of the policy orientation, even upping the $20 million low-income mortgage. This he said cannot put race relations in a very good stead [because] it’s pretty bad.
Nehusi, who is Guyanese by birth, but presently resides abroad said he follows developments in Guyana. According to him the current race relations are deplorable. He also made known persons would have difficulty rejecting Ramjattan’s description of the current reality, pointing out that “there’s another level at which race relations in Guyana are even more disturbing.”
To this end Nehusi urged that Guyanese to step back and study how the society has developed. He contended that such development has seen the state consistently favouring certain groups while not favouring other groups.
“And even within those same groups,” he pointed out, “some were less favoured than others, and it’s ridiculous in a way that we’re comparing how different groups have been feared. Because let’s cut to the chase, the two major groups in Guyana are Indians and Africans. And all of us, both groups as well as Portuguese, Chinese, and Indigenous Guyanese have been exploited by colonial powers, by Europeans.”
Referring to the European enslavers and colonisers, Nehusi said “They have tricked us so deeply that today we’re fighting against each other rather than trying to find out what really happened and how we have come to the start, and I’m going to say something that might be provocative to some people, but I hope I provoke them into thought. It doesn’t matter which government comes to power now, and it doesn’t matter how evenly that government tries to distribute the oil resources that have inflamed so many passions, some groups are still going to be left behind.”
Further explaining the situation, the academic posited that at the political leadership level- dating back to Forbes Burnham and Cheddie Jagan, who become vice of the plantation politics, and as a nation we have failed to triumph against or over the divisive plantation politics and that’s why our country is still in the state it is.
