Dear Editor,
I have had a report on President Ali’s address at the State House to mark Emancipation Day 2023.
His address which I got a recording of and as reported in Sections of the Media centered on the theme ‘Valuing your Freedom is not abusing your freedom.’
President Ali is marching on the royal road similar to those European enslavers and Dutch and British Plantation Overseers.
Recently, I attended functions on the West Coast of Berbice organized by Descendants of Manumitted Africans. We are all disgusted and disappointed by President Ali’s words of deception and employ the well practiced and destructive technique of divide and rule.
Briefly, the Presidential staff carefully avoided inviting the authentic representatives of groups who over the years have been seeking to preserve the dignity of Afro-Guyanese and to secure their rightful place in the scheme of things.
Sadly even while the President was addressing the large and carefully identified gathering, our brothers and sisters in parts of West Coast Berbice were gearing up to resist attempts by his friends of the Government to sequester, steal and secure ancestral lands bought by Manumitted Africans after they were freed.
At West Coast Berbice, residents are yet to obtain a plausible reason why the Berbice Bridge was not built in an area south of Stanleytown on the East Bank of Berbice to Itahca on the West Bank, even though studies and International agencies recommended those two sites.
There has been a medical facility for years at Fort Wellington, but the Government has announced a billion dollar health project at Bath Settlement. The marginalization of those who wine and dine at State House is a done deal and except for those who like Esau in the Bible, willingly are selling their rights for a mess of pottage.
In this Emancipation month, I say to my brothers and sisters, if we allow ourselves to be divided, a subtle but severe form of re-enslavement beckons. We must learn from our history during slavery At the end of the working week, Massa gave each slave a portion of rum. I can say no more but to lean on history to those who were being invited, beware of the Greeks bearing gifts.
History has a puckish way of repeating itself.
Yours truly,
Hamilton Green
Elder
