Holding Guyana hostage

Linden warlord?
Sharma Solomon, the chairman of Region 10, is outraged that President Ramotar didn’t personally get in touch with him to inform him (Solomon) that he (the president) would be coming to Linden to hear their complaints. Kissoon from the Muckraker tells us that it wasn’t just Solomon who was bent out of shape – but some 15,000 Lindeners gathered for a ‘meeting’. OK, we know that Kissoon can’t count, but you get the idea? No, you don’t. This is not an issue about courtesy – it’s all about power. And we’d better be careful about letting this get out of hand. This is about the people of Linden demanding that the president of Guyana – sanctioned by the supreme law of the land, the Constitution – negotiate with their local leader to enter their community. What they’re telling the president and the rest of us in Guyana is that they’re not subject to the laws of Guyana. They’re establishing their own laws that we and the president must follow. This is ‘warlordism’. We’ve seen the creation of the ‘warlord’ in the Middle East and Yugoslav and where it could lead. But we don’t have to go that far: we had the warlord syndrome acting out in Buxton less than a decade ago. Remember? No, you don’t. If Guyanese did, they’d be up in arms about what’s going down in Linden.
Let’s keep in mind the putative cause of all the storm and thunder is that the government dared to suggest Linden be treated like the rest of the country on electricity rates! There are all kinds of excuses such as ‘70 per cent unemployment’. No one’s shown where that figure came from but it’s now gospel. No one’s also saying why the billions doled out in the LEAP programme to stimulate Linden’s economy hasn’t worked. But they’re busy negotiating successor programmes. Didn’t someone say if you keep on doing the same things and expect different results, you’re crazy? But what reinforces the Linden warlord syndrome is the attitude to the president’s later statement that unless the roads to and from Linden were cleared, he wouldn’t be visiting. How dare he? How could he be so ‘arrogant’? This ‘outrageous’ statement evidently raised the Linden anger level to boiling point: the army and police were prevented from clearing the roads as they had been instructed to do.
We have said it before and we’ll say it again. You can’t negotiate with blackmailers. Lindeners are now holding the nation at ransom by blocking the roads to the interior. This confounded nonsense must stop!
Spreading race hate
A letter writer took Sharma Solomon, the would-be warlord of Linden, to task for claiming that the police only shoots at African-Guyanese protesters. Solomon explicitly mentioned protests at Albion when sugar workers and other residents protested depredations against them by bandits while the police stood idly by.
The residents’ nerves were stretched to breaking point after being forced to ‘keep watch’ all night.
The letter writer reminded Solomon that Mohammed Shamshudeen had been killed by a policeman as he sat with others peacefully in front of the police station.
It was then, as it is now, the month of Ramadan and Shamshudeen had just offered prayers at the Masjid.
But Solomon is not to be blamed from silencing this truth to create racial hostilities. David Granger, who was elected leader of the PNC, has been peddling this nonsense for years.
But it is apposite to ask at this time of universal acceptance of commission of inquiries into police shootings as to why there was never any inquiry into the death of the Albion canecutter Mohammed Shamshudeen. Yes, Ramjattan?
Strange bedfellows
They say politics makes strange bedfellows. So true.
After conducting a vicious nasty smear campaign against Ralph Ramkarran for years, Kissoon of the Muckraker announced he and Ramkarran have kissed and made up! How sweet!