Who woulda thought?? Plantation Enmore is no mo’…gone forever…. What should we do?? Look back in anger?? Or in resignation?? Enmore and Leonora were the two axes of PPP’s onslaught on the colonial establishment after Cheddi returned from the US all fired up to fight for the downtrodden. Since the most downtrodden just happened to be cane workers on the sugar plantations – and he just happened to be from a sugar plantation – it wasn’t surprising he chose to be their knight in shining armour!!
So here it was, the cane cutters of Enmore felt they were being screwed royally in 1948 by being forced to do twice the work for the same old wages by the sugar barons. The MPCA union that was supposed to be representing them had sold out to the self-same sugar barons. Jagan’s new union – the GIWU, the precursor to the GAWU, stepped into the breach and the rest is history!!
There was a complete shutdown of the plantation on June 16th; the cane cutters were massed against the managers, the Police were called in; they read the Riot Act; the workers stood their ground; the Police fired, and five workers were shot dead and fourteen wounded!! In the outrage that followed the Enmore massacre, Cheddi led the massive funeral procession to Le Repentir cemetery in Georgetown, and, as he put it, made an oath that he’d seek justice for them. The PPP was the vehicle!!
But it was Burnham and the PNC – which came out of the split in the PPP that the former engineered – who inherited an independent Guyana! Jagan’s faithful sugar workers couldn’t overcome Burnham, the UK AND the USA after a strike starting in Leonora in 1964!! Cheddi and his PPP were banished in Opposition hell for decades, during which Burnham shuttered Leonora in retaliation for their support for Cheddi!! And when Granger took power in 2015, he shuttered Enmore and three other plantations to remind the PPP that nothing had been forgotten nor forgiven!!
The PPP – remembering the proud history of sugar workers in the struggle for an independent Guyana, and the inequity of vindictively throwing 7000 workers on the breadlines — had promised to reopen the shuttered estates. But since the elections, the burgeoning oil-related development has swept the East Coast, making sugar irrelevant in the unfolding new economy. And so, this June 16th, we remember the Enmore Martyrs not just for their role in the sugar industry, but in the awakening of Dr Jagan’s consciousness to mobilise ordinary citizens to demand their rights as citizens of the country they had built.
Let’s hear it for those five souls who will live forever as long as there’s a Guyana!!
…at Granger’s hubris
If you break the rules in the army – in the British system out of which we evolved – you’re subject to a court- martial. In that court-martial, the defendant absolutely wouldn’t think that he could get to choose his own Director of Service Prosecutions, would he? So where did Granger get this idea that he can pick his own judge and jury to try his case against a host of newspapers for libel that’s coming up??
It must be some deep-seated complex, because he displayed the same high-handed arbitrariness when he felt the CCJ had told him he could compose the list of six names and give it to Jagdeo for the latter to give it back to him to choose a GECOM Chair!! And then unilaterally picked James Patterson to head GECOM!! If the truth be told, he confessed he joined the PNC the moment he returned to Guyana as a 2nd Lieutenant from Mons in 1966.
So, he’s simply following his master’s position on the Judiciary!!
…at GECOM Chair’s explanation
It’s very clear that the Opposition Commissioners can’t grasp Justice Singh’s explanation for denying their request to examine the SPECIFIC 2020 Rig Attempt.
That’s…the…job…of…the…Courts…since…it’ll…mean…evaluating…EVIDENCE…produced!!
