There are many shouts and call for a shared government in Guyana and even Trinidad, and all have failed. Even the unity of “one love” does not work in politics nowadays. Our fossilized Indian politicians and activists need to re calibrate to new ways of fighting politics for solutions to secure Indian ethnic, political and economic rights. What works in a nearly equally ethnic-balanced driven countries like Guyana and Trinidad is the fear they have for each other as though both ethnic groups have nuclear weapons.
Decentralization in a meaningful way is one possibility while another solution is the splitting of Guyana. Historically, both in Trinidad and Guyana the Indians are the ones to support the Africans’ call to unite against injustice, but Africans, most of the time, do not unite with Indians when requested to do the same. In Guyana, in the 1800 to 2015 Indians were always the ones who expressed solidarity with the African dock and bauxite workers. Africans did not reciprocate in kind for sugar workers. Many sugar workers were killed from colonial times to now. Yet, Africans did not show solidarity with Indians.
Indians were alone in the 1872 Devonshire strikes; in 1873 many Indian sugar workers on strike at Skeldon were killed. Both in 1905 and 1924 when sugar workers joined in solidarity with the African waterfront strikers, some were killed as was described in “A Salute to Indian Guyanese, May 15, 2019 by Donald Ramoutar, former President of Guyana.
At the time of independence Indians, both in Trinidad and Guyana, signed on with Africans for independence only to be ruled by Africans for many decades. In Trinidad, Indians are always the ones to compromise and split their votes to accommodate African leaders like Dr. Eric Williams (PNM), Karl Hudson Phillips of ONR, and ANR Robinson of NAR. In Guyana, Indians split their votes to support the African-led PNC (1964-1992) only to be laid off by the thousands.
The problem with the shared African-led government is that Indians always ended up playing a supporting role, like the present subservient position of the AFC to the PNC. Indians always get overpowered by Africans. One of the reasons why Africans always dominate Indians is that Indians are still POLITICALLY CONSTIPATED and cannot get the right LAXATIVES to SHIT on their competitors. African leaders and think tank do not care politically and socially about how Indians feel. African leaders will sell out Guyana just to stay in power as in the case of the coalition energy Minister Raphael Trotman signing off billions of dollars of Guyana oil revenue, according to a recent “Watchdog Group says Guyana lost US$ 55 billion.”
The same played out in Trinidad where African leaders did not use the oil revenue to develop Trinidad. Even the U.S. Representative called out the coalition President David Granger PNC – for violating elections laws, courts’ rulings, and the constitution, “U.S. Calls Out Guyana’s Government to respect democracy, published Jan 31 / 2020).”
It is time for Indians to seriously re calibrate politically to offset their opponents. BEGGING will NOT cut it. Note: Both Christopher Columbus [Trinidad] and Sir Walter Raleigh [Guyana] did not ‘discovered’ these two countries for African. Guyana was given to indentured East Indians by the British for Reparations.
