AFTER reading an article in one of the daily newspapers about the former Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines saying that racial tensions in Guyana ‘cry out for redress’, I was a little surprised and somewhat ashamed that to this day and age, that someone from outside of Guyana (Sir James Mitchell) can come and make such a conclusion.

One can only understand why the Stabroek News would ‘cotton on’ to that particular line of Sir James Mitchell during his lecture in honour of the late Desmond Hoyte without giving the same prominence to what the ex-prime minister said about other issues - for instance, the PNC and elections.

I quote, “We in the Caricom had heard of the irregularities in Guyanese elections. We knew that overseas voting through our representatives in our islands was fraudulent…We read of the analyses in England and the Unites States where certain addresses of the voters did not exist. We learned of the skewed results even of certain villages in Guyana.”

For the record, Mitchell said that the 1985 elections were seen as most blatantly rigged and that he was not in favour of Dominican Prime Minister Dame Eugenia Charles throwing Guyana out of the Caricom grouping and move the secretariat out (of Guyana) on the grounds of rigged elections and he and others got Charles to agree that an expulsion was not the way to go.

They had also resolved to give the opposition some space. Further, the former prime minister said Desmond Hoyte agreed to lift the ban on newsprint and give the opposition space.

However, with Cheddi Jagan indicating to him that he was going to boycott the elections, Mitchell said he persuaded him not to, based on the ground that Commonwealth observer missions would be coming to Guyana to observe the polls.

I was left wondering why such pronouncements by Mitchell did not make the headline as the one about racial tension in the Stabroek News. One can draw one’s own conclusion from this, that the Stabroek News is bent on promoting what is of interest to them.

Coming back to the issue of the racial tensions, I do not feel that many of our problems are as a result of race.

Guyana, in comparison to the way it was in the past, has moved a far way, unless of course people still hold deep-seated racial tensions that they do not come out and talk about. But, where is this big race-tension? Is it that Sir Mitchell is out of touch with what is happening Guyana?

How come the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) does not find much evidence of this?
MICHELLE YOUNGE