VishMahabir posted:I am taking a course on ethnic politics at Queens College and some of these issues ring a bell…so here are my comments.
Just look about you. There are no rich black elite from the PPP tenure.
Banna, we are not dealing in trivialities or anecdotal evidence…looking around me does not do anything for me. When I look around me in my neighborhood all I see a lot of white people who own a lot of businesses and have a lot of cars in their driveways. However, I also know that there are a lot of Asians in my neighborhood who are doing quite well. I can use the US census tract report to compile statistical report and I can check the business records to see how many of these ‘invisible” Asians are doing well in business in this neighborhood. My point is : your observation, like the good professor in based on a personal observation, not statistical evidence. How in the world is it possible that no single non-Indian, after 23 years has gotten rich under the PPP?
This is Yet everywhere you see the old and the new elites are Indians. Even T-shirts vendors building malls.
I am going to assume that this statement is a desperate attempt to confirm Hinds point.
Unless you are plainly stupid you will grasp that democracy is built around a stable well articulated and closely networked elite. They would sontaneously grow across the racial demographics if the democracy is organized around deliberation and discussion across the spectrum of the society. This elite is the social cement for progress and the only means to successful development of the society.When that elite is of one class, tribe, or ethnic group you have a dysfunctional democracy and it will inevitably decay into a dictatorship.
These statements may be true of the PPP. But the way its written, they could also be true of the PNC era before 1992. You seem to forget that Guyana history started many years back when the PNC had a deliberate policy of setting up a dictatorship, as well as an ethnic state, in which according to Clive Thomas, more than 80% of the economy was owned by the state….and who controlled the state??. The PPP simple continued in that tradition and ran a further deteriorated state. Lets be fair about this.
Take a look in our world today. Syria, Iraq...all have fractured elites; vertically segmented by tribes and horizontally divided by religious sects. Saddam did not build anything. His Baathist group were Sinis who deliberately subjugated other groups. Libya, was deliberately left tribal by Qaddafi. With him gone no summoning creed to weld the tribal enclaves into a whole. Syria is also similarly supported by a small sect who assumed all power to the detriment of others. The intolerable segmentation and dis-empowerment ultimately caused that society to explode.
Not sure what you are blabbering about here. You comparing sticks and berries…Guyana has its own unique problems
Hinds similarly chastise the APNU for their lack of transparency, lack of inclusiveness and myopia. Granger created this monstrous Presidential Ministry with satellites ministries projecting from the center from which every management decision radiate. He is reproducing the same PPP structure and this time it will be even more devastating for us given he will have the means to create an African elite class tens of times more rich and powerful than you can ever envision.
I agree that the black elite may become more filthy rich than any PPP member or supporter. However, you miss the point. Hinds agenda is an Afrocentric one. He wants to justify a redistribution of the state resources and empower Afros. He does not believe the govt is going far enough. In his mindset, Indians have nothing to ask for. So what about the majority of Indians who live in the hinterland, outside GT whose lives are dependent on cash crops and seasonal employment?
The problem with this position, as I said before, is that inevitably the Indians will perceive all actions by the current govt as based on racism against Indians. So my question to you and Hinds: How do the leaders tackle this problem in society and move forward? The PNC did not tackle it, the PPP did not have a solution and the current PNC-led government does not have a plan to convince the MAJORITY of Indians that its policy is not based on race.
What I am suggesting is that leaders (in government and opposition) must agree on some plan or formula for addressing this problem. Otherwise, the same issue will come up again if and when the PPP gets into office…because Guyana’s racial problems are not going away anytime soon.
Hinds has said some things that makes sense, but some of his utterances are way out of line.
You should first not break the post up by cryptic and stupid queries if you want to arrive at understanding. I do not have to affirm Hinds post. It is self affirming. My mention of the T shirt vendor is also self evident. Here is an uneducated drug hustler becoming an elite informing you the rise did not come from industrious and creative investments but corruption and crony capitalism.
My mention of syria etc was to afford you a broader vision of the potential for internal disaster when the intellectual, entrepreneurial, managerial, governmental, security structure from which a national elite emerge is not demographically represented in the system chaos develops.
Lambasting Hinds for his serious assessment of Indian racism in action is not going to help clarify anything or accrue to a well written criticism by you. It simply reifies that the racism and intellectual blindness in the indian community is sickeningly pervasive .
The PPP were tasked to transition us into a democracy. Instead they hardened the old dictatorial constitution by defending it at every level and asserting that it is valid. Their pocket judges in the courts fortified that belief into legal precedence. The present APNU now have a free hand to ride the wave of an autocratic system to constitute something a hundred times the size of the PPP. Note they did not spread the wealth beyond their friends and family.
Our economy is slated to increase some 20 times its size and hundreds of times its economic power. It will all be concentrated in the hands of a very few with whatever percolating down reaching indians after being slopped up by mainly one ethnic group. Then you will build a statue to Hinds and wish you were his convert.