Dear Editor,
This week I learned of the passing of Sase Omo, a Guyanese militant, freedom fighter in the USA, at age 79. My memories of Sase Omo go back to the year 1978 when I returned to Guyana. Sase was standing outside of Parliament building with two placards, one on his back, the other in his hands. The placards were of the then notoriously rigged referendum of July 10th 1978. It was this referendum that paved the way for the concoction of the fraudulent 1980 Burnham constitution and bestowed on Burnham and all subsequent executive presidents the powers of an Old Time King. I later became acquainted with this Guyanese legend, who was also one of the founding members of a pressure group that became known as the Working People’s Alliance (WPA). It was in early 1979 at a construction site in Albouystown where I was employed that I met Aubrey Garraway, a Muslim brother selling incense and distributing DAYCLEAN, the underground leaflet of the Working People’s Alliance. Garraway was a fulltime WPA activist, and a member of the Brigade, the distribution arm of the Mass Activity Unit.
He never received money for party work, his was out of the commitment to the Guyanese struggle, as a matter of fact working class militants dedicated their time out of the commitment to the struggle for the democratization of Guyanese society.
What I have learnt having been part of the struggle for the democratization of Guyanese society, it was the working people and their families who suffered, whose homes were wrecked by the police under the pretext of searching for arms, ammunition and explosives, whose families were harassed, who paid the price with the death of the breadwinner of the house as Ruben Saymar, the taxi driver on the WCD, and some loved ones as in the case of Edward Dublin of Linden who was killed by police allegedly for stealing a sack of cement. Dublin was a well-known WPA activist. He left behind an aged mother, a pregnant wife and a three-year-old child…yes these are tragic untold narratives.
But when the change came in 1992 people suddenly appeared out of the blue, they never made any sacrifices but they assumed offices of government. They became the new overlords who now enjoy a life of wealth and luxury while working class militants abandoned by their parties, found themselves grounded in poverty, destitution and in time, dishonourable graves.
And so it was for Mobutu Kamara, Adyshina, Tony Nunes, sister Iris and many others who gave years of service to the party, now it is Aubrey Garraway’s time. For days he had been seated under the bus shed near the first small bridge next to the Office of the President. Passersby don’t know that this destitute old man had served his country, was incarcerated, beaten up by the police and thugs, the scars on his face, the almost loss of his sight in the struggle that brought an end to the PNC dictatorship. But when the PPP came to government in 1992 by way of free and fair elections, they turned around and stifled the democratic process in its infancy. What followed was the continuum of a long line of dictatorships and the betrayal of our sovereign wealth to the big capitalist consortium…In bidding farewell to Sase, our deepest condolences to his family and comrades who fought alongside him for a better life for all Guyanese….the struggle continues