Dear Editor,
We have been an independent nation, free from colonial rule now for some 60 years, but are we free from the hangover of that rule and have we yet grasped the fact that, as President Ali puts it, we are “One Guyana”?
From the time that our first Prime Minister, Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, raised the Golden Arrowhead, our national flag, over our country at the National Park and the Union Jack of Great Britain came down, perhaps the most significant occurrence was Burnham and Cheddi Jagan embracing each other. I was there. There are not many of us alive today who were there to witness the birth of our nation.
The symbolism of that embrace should not have been lost to Guyanese at the time. It was certainly not lost on me, but generally it was lost to the majority of our people. We became an independent nation, yes, but a dangerously divided people.
At the Constitutional Conference in 1963, leading to Independence, Burnham succeeded in persuading the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Duncan Sandys, to change our Constitution from the Constituency System to Proportional Representation.
At the December 7th General Elections leading to Independence, on 26th May, 1966, Burnham had won 40.8% of the vote, Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party winning 45% and the third party, the United Force, under businessman, Peter d’Aguiar, who happened to be my uncle, 12.5%. Burnham and d’Aguiar joined hands and a PNC/UF Coalition had formed the government with Cheddi Jagan leading the Opposition.
Eleven years before that, however, in 1955, Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham fell out over the leadership of the People’s Progressive Party, both contesting separately for the government of our country under the PPP label but, unfortunately, not based on policy and programme, but racial loyalty of our people.
Our country, therefore, at the time of Independence, was politically divided between Guyanese of Indian and African descent with the rest of the population having no choice but to choose one side or the other. We were independent but were we a nation?
The best definition I can find of “nationhood” is “A distinct, typically independent, and sovereign entity. It represents a collective identity based on shared characteristics like culture, history, language, or territory often achieved through gaining independence or establishing a government.”
We had gained Independence, but did we share a collective identity? Our national motto was and is “One People, One Nation, One Destiny”, but, for all these 60 years, do we truly and sincerely understand its meaning? Do we really know and recognize who we are as a people?
At the Constitutional Conference deciding on our Independence, Duncan Sandys had this to say “All that you have told me at this Conference and all that I saw in my visit to your country last July have convinced me that there is one problem which transcends all others – namely the growth of racism. That is the curse of British Guiana today; the whole life of the country is poisoned and weakened by mutual suspicion and fear between the two predominantly racial groups, the Indians and the Africans”.
But then, shrewdly and absolutely correctly, Duncan Sandys went on to say: “There is no deep-rooted or historical enmity between the races, nor is there any basic clash between them; nor is there any animosity between the religious groups – Christian, Hindu and Muslim.” Sandys then concluded that “The root of the trouble lies almost entirely in the development of party politics along racial lines.”
What, of course, Sandys neglected to say, was that the British colonial policy of “Divide and Conquer” had encouraged the ethnic divide between our people.
Much has changed since then. Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan were both towering political personalities, but they are in the past. Their parties retain the same names but have moved on to the practical adaption of their ideologies to the world in which Guyana must live and survive today, and, at our last elections, it is reasonable to conclude that ethnic voting did not dictate the results.
Six years ago, the Ethnic Relations Commission invited me to speak on the subject of “A National Conversation on Challenges to and Recommendations for Ethnic Harmony”. I asked the question then: “Have we, as yet, as a people, accepted who we are and the fact that we share a common destiny? Have we, as yet, recognized that, regardless of our ethnic heritage, we are first and foremost, and, inescapably, Guyanese, one people, as our national motto defines us? Have we, as yet, grasped the fact that we cannot build a prosperous and united country without first accepting that we share a common destiny and a joint responsibility for the stability and development of the country which has given us birth?”
I answered the question then as I answer it now: “We must admit to who we are and identify as Guyanese. But it cannot be driven from the top. It must begin at the bottom, at the neighbourhood level, at the community level, at the local government level. We must remove the option from our political leaders to rule on the basis of ethnic allegiance. We must force upon our political leaders the absolute need to win elections resulting from the policies and programmes which they present to the electorate, not from the ethnicity of the leader of the Party.”
It is evidential that the People’s Progressive Party has done just that and that is why they won the last election with an overwhelming majority.
Guyana is not unique by any means, and we are not unique as a people of many different heritages seeking to build a collective whole as a nation.
Take the United States, for instance, where many of our people, unfortunately, still run to as a haven for prosperity and learn differently when they get there.
The US is over 200 years an independent nation, but, it is made up of people who came as Immigrants from other countries with different religions, of differing races, including the history of the scourge of slavery, like us.
The US, even today, still struggles to deal with these differences. But ask a citizen of the United States of America who he is and he will tell you plain and simple, ‘I am an American’, and mean it.
In this, our 60th year of Independence, when we are asked the same question and answer ‘I am Guyanese’, I believe, the great majority of us are proud to say it and mean it.
Our President, Dr. Irfaan Ali, every day, determinedly reminds us that we are, indeed, “One Guyana”, meaning, of course, that we are one nation, that we are, indeed, “a collective”, that we are, in fact, one identity.
We are, I believe, well on the way to achieving nationhood, in the true meaning of the term.
One last observation. Of all the challenges in our immediate future, in this 60th year of Independence that we face as a nation and as a people, it is the defence of our Essequibo. Defence against the persistent aggression of the current Venezuelan regime to take it from us, in spite of the fact that the US government is now in control of that regime.
The ruling of the International Court of Justice in our favour will not, we should know, automatically, avoid that threat.
The Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations, and Venezuela’s agent, Samuel Reinaldo Moncada Acosta, addressing the International Court of Justice at the recently concluded oral presentations, told the Court “Venezuela has never consented to submitting this dispute to the jurisdiction of any court of arbitral tribunal…this is why Venezuela does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice…it respectfully rejects its jurisdiction to hear and decide on this dispute…Venezuela will reiterate that its participation does not imply recognition of the court’s jurisdiction.”
We must, therefore, always prepare ourselves to meet and overcome that challenge.