To date not a word from the PPP with respect to their flaw rewriting of the Amerind act that allowed the interloper Jean chang to think she can squat on our village land and thumb her nose at us.
Promises of the brown men in white skin speaking with their inherited forked tongue to get your votes! By the way...note the words....the PPP has given us lands! I wonder which one of Ramotar' grandfathers bestowed the land on him that he can now "give" it to us!
BTW Ms Sukai...remember our elder Stephen campbell whose blood flows through your veins and mine...he did not sell us out. You setting up the condition that the great PPP "give" you rights leads to the present predicament. You need to affirm that like all peoples, we have rights by being alive as humans and those rights follow the same trajectory that others possess as they claim a space in the society forged in a geographical space where we always were. We also do not want to be mainstreamed; that is a code word for assimilation.
Indians are Indians and blacks are blacks and Amerindians are Amerindians we want to be who we are and share communal cultural space like they do We are not the subaltern/culturally backward to be mainstreamed. Our culture and creed are as strong and valid as any.
The PNC or the PPP did not give us rights. It is ours bestowed by our existence here! I await a squawk from you as an Amerindian with respect to the recent ruling...cat got your tongue?
Jabba the Hut... we do not trust you.
Amerindian rights and interests assured under PPP/C – Ramotar
People Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Presidential Candidate Donald Ramotar has promised to assure the rights and the advancement of the interests of the Amerindian people under his tenure as president.
“You can trust us. We have given you the land and we will do nothing to ever deprive you of any of your rights. I will never allow your rights to be restricted,” Ramotar told supporters at a public meeting held at Kumaka play-field, Moruca, Region One on Saturday.
Ramotar slammed the opposition parties’ attempts to discourage the land titling process by recruiting agents from the communities to stymie attempts at a consensus on the titling.
The opposition parties’ categorisation of government’s support to Amerindian communities as “handouts,” was also strongly criticised during the rally.
President Jagdeo in his address, underscored that the gap in opportunities available on the coastland and the hinterland has been significantly reduced, pointing to significant improvements in access to education beyond primary school as one area.
More than 700 students in Moruca alone are accessing secondary education. There are now 10 secondary schools in hinterland communities. In Region One, there are the Port Kaituma, North West and Santa Rosa secondary schools.
Reference was made to the Hinterland Scholarship Programme which affords students from the hinterland communities, access to quality secondary or technical education in the city which they would otherwise not have been able to access in their communities.
Scholarships to Cuba were also mentioned, and according to President Jagdeo, Amerindians have proven themselves to be the most intelligent.
“You have some of the brightest people in the world from the Amerindian communities. Today our policemen, doctors, nurses and scientists and engineers are coming from the Amerindian communities,” President Jagdeo said.
The president said that under the PNC, Amerindians were treated as second class citizens and recalled the period when the opposition party had criticised government’s plan to enroll hinterland students at President’s College, even though an Amerindian was the top student.
Also in attendance were Amerindian Affairs Minister Pauline Sukhai; Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker; Presidential Adviser on Governance Gail Teixeira; Region One Chairman Fermin Singh and other top regional officials.
Minister Sukhai said Amerindians can today walk with their heads held high since under the PPP/C, they have made unprecedented achievements as government ministers and doctors.
“When it was the PNC (in government), the Amerindians were not even in the mainstream of society. We did not have the democracy, Amerindians did not have the chance or could not even dream of becoming ministers,” Minister Sukhai said.