The passage last Wednesday of the Acquisition of Lands for Public Purposes (Amendment) Bill has nefarious intent. Fresh in the minds of Guyanese is the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP’s) efforts to dispossess some of their natural inheritance and deprive them of wealth. We have seen this systematic deprivation efforts in several areas.
The most recent is land acquisition, setting in place the legal framework to dispossess African Guyanese of their lands. Some cases that readily come to mind are the Cane View/Mocha Arcadia, West Bank Demerara incident in January 2023 where persons were forcibly thrown off ancestral lands by the state, on false claim it was in the path of a four-lane road, only to later see these lands transferred into the hands of PPP cohorts.
The PPP has also attempted to dispossess persons of their ancestral lands at Peter’s Hall, West Bank Demerara, on the pretext that the lands are needed because they surround the new Demerara Harbour Bridge. The activism of the people, through the court, is attempting to right this wrong, and at least ensure if persons must lose their lands, it is not without reasonable value and compensation.
Let us not be fooled by the report that the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affair, Anil Nandlall, does not understand the concept of ancestral land. You won’t expect a man at his level to seek to hide behind such a flimsy excuse of not knowing the definition for ancestral lands. What is he talking about, when the concept of African ancestral land has only been in a historical sense of land ownership, bought and paid for by Africans in post slavery.
The claim to ancestral land may vary from group to group. But African ancestral land has always been placed in a context of reference to post slavery acquisition of lands by former slaves who paid their dues by ownership of land. So, whatever this learned man is seeking to do will not be accepted by the heirs of these lands.
The passage of the Bill will be used to legitimise PPP intensifying greed and camouflage overt aggression and attack on African economic well-being and dignity. A couple years ago I had cause to address the African economic genocide.
At that time there were concerns about the PPP’s deliberate dis-investment in bauxite through lowering production, laying off more than 3000 bauxite workers, and breaking-up the Bauxite Workers Pension Plan, which was the largest single pool of money owned by a predominantly African working group, which was worth in excess of $2.5 Billion. The disparity in the treatment was made of the predominantly African community in bauxite compared to the sugar industry where a significant number of PPP supporters populate, and which comprises their main labour arm.
In the public sector where Africans dominate the PPP has implemented several measures that affect wages, salaries and pension to undermine these workers. The cooperative sector in which the African economy is grounded has also been a target for PPP destruction.
The PPP has a track record of sabotaging the group they believe to be their greatest political challenge. Economic targeting has been one of their major means. This new Bill should be seen in the context of the PPP continuous attack on the African Guyanese economic well-being and dignity.
The dissatisfaction among the people, and expressed in various media, must be placed in this context. For many have witnessed and have been directly targeted by this regime. Where it is evident the government continues to pay no attention to the pleas of the people and therefore their response of ignoring the people came as no surprise.
The nature of the PPP regime under Irfaan Ali and Bharrat Jagdeo is of ignoring and trampling on the people. This has not changed from the time under Jagdeo as President, and it is easy to figure why that is so.
The regime’s aggression has intensified even more with the consolidation of their power in government and in the presence of a grossly weak and inadequate opposition.
The response of the Opposition to the bill came only after pressure from civic society. And whereas they chose to join the PPP in the National Assembly to be part of a vote they would not have won, given the distribution, it is disappointing that the collective opposition did not see the need to register strongly their non-support through a non-attendance, to galvanize a protest in in front of Parliament and issue a strong statement about the consequence of this development.
In this joke of a‘one Guyana,’ today we face a circumstance of ‘all pigs being equal but some more than some;’ of failure both on the side of the Government and the political Opposition. The palpable silence of others in society as these continued abuses and deprivations is also noted.
The people of Guyana must take note and learn from the struggles of those on whose shoulders we stand and recognise that this struggle is one they must take on and not run from. We are reminded that power concedes nothing without a struggle.
