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Why Were All Five Members Of The High-Level CARICOM Team Dispatched To Oversee Guyana’s Election Ballot Count Black?

The Editor:

When one looks at the five representatives from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) — all Blacks — selected to oversee the re-counting of votes of the Guyana general elections, in this severely ethnically-divided society, it boggles the mind, beyond belief.

This was an extremely insensitive move by CARICOM, and was not one to inspire confidence, especially when one of the persons in the group, played a critical role in the general elections of her own country, which was argued in court as an attempt to disenfranchise one particular ethnic group.

Which Black person in Guyana would find it acceptable, if all the five persons were Indians?

It is too late to change the composition of this group. We might as well put the fox to guard the hen-house, or dogs to count the eggs.

Swami Aksharananda
WCD, Guyana

One comment

  1. Sharmon Carrington

    While I understand the point that the composition of the CARICOM Group perhaps should have been more racially diverse, during the 1992 elections and onwards, I did not hear anyone objecting to the Carter Centre Group being just that.

    Although I hate to return to 1992, I must, because during those elections, I witnessed the nonsense that took place at several polling stations. I became so emotional at the level of disenfranchisement of Black Guyanese attempting to cast their votes, that I couldn’t help crying. Yes, crying to see what Indian Guyanese and the PPP were doing to voters.

    I did not only cry, but I comforted voters, who cried terribly, because they were not allowed to exercise their legal right to vote. All the while, I wondered why are Jimmy Carter and his party not commenting on these scenes.

    I visited 5 polling stations on election day, and I did not see any of Carter’s group at any of them. Perhaps they were all white, given the way white America viewed Blacks then, and now.

    Who spoke about the diversity of that group then? If it didn’t matter then, why should it matter now? Is it because Guyana now has oil? Or Is it because Indian Guyanese believe that Blacks have absolutely no entitlement to anything good in Guyana, and that they are not worthy of prosperity?

    Or is it that they refuse to understand that Guyana is big enough for all 6 races to co-exist, in peace, harmony and love, especially Indians and Blacks.

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