The problem with the Guyanese indians is that they rather suffer and starve under the PPP and watch the PPP political elite rape and plunder the country. But I can see the day coming when the blacks will arm themselves and start a war. You can only push ppl so far before they decide enough is enough. The Arab spring etc have provided enough evidence of this. Watch what is happening in Bosnia right now. Guyana is going to go the same way if the PPP don't stop the thieving.

The C(K)UOOLIE ELITE are animals.

The eat the weak and feed the strong and they are strong because a BLACK POLICE FORCE and a BLACK GDF is in their pocket.

HA HA!

Machiavelli is alive!

Guyana is long overdue for a revolution. While I'm not holding my breath, I do expect the PPP to be diminished in support as time goes by

Mr T is right.

Beneath what appears to be calm race relations, a strong undercurrent of discontent and anger is seething against the PPP/C.

Non-PPP Afro-Guyanese are are not happy at real and perceived discrimination and marginalization meted out by those in authority.

If change doesn't come next elections, one can expect an armed rebellion greater in magnitude and fierceness than Cuffy's 1763 revolt.

Mr T and I are not advocating violence, get it straight.

We're just interpreting the current situation in the context of similar historical phenomena.

Joker

This is a very complex matter. I am a willing to listen and share my own experiences. Great post. 

Will be back this evening to add to this post.

I read this as an undergrad and I see lots of similarities. Guyana does not only belong to the Blacks and Indians. 

The Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's book La rebelión de las masas.

 

 

In this work, Ortega traces the genesis of the "mass-man" and analyzes his constitution en route to describing the rise to power and action of the masses in society. Ortega is throughout quite critical of both the masses and the mass-men of which they are made up, contrasting "noble life and common life" and excoriating the barbarism and primitivism he sees in the mass-man. He does not, however, refer to specific social classes, as has been so commonly misunderstood in the English-speaking world. Ortega states that the mass-man could be from any social background, but his specific target is the bourgeois educated man, the señorito satisfecho (satisfied young man or Mr. Satisfied), the specialist who believes he has it all and extends the command he has of his subject to others, contemptuous of his ignorance in all of them. Ortega's summary of what he attempted in the book exemplifies this quite well, while simultaneously providing the author's own views on his work: "In this essay an attempt has been made to sketch a certain type of European, mainly by analyzing his behaviour as regards the very civilization into which he was born". This had to be done because that individual "does not represent a new civilisation struggling with a previous one, but a mere negation ..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolt_of_the_Masses

What exactly is their plight?

I wouldn't expect GNI's Resident Buggerologist to understand this thread so just bounce.

your goadee getting in the way of the black man progress

you going to a bottom house meeting first then come here with your race hate

LMAO

Indians are suffering the same plight as Blacks under the PPP. When the PNC was ruling, Indians and Blacks were suffering the same plight of today. If the PPP is out of office tomorrow, the Guyanese people will continue to suffer the same plight as when the PNC/PPP were ruling. Uniting the Blacks and Indians is the best solution to stop the racial plight of the Guyanese people in general. Blacks are suffering under the PNC political mental slavery and Indians are suffering under the PPP political mental slavery. We need a game changer in Guyana politics, and removing one party and replaced it with another is not the answer. Unite the people is the best answer to combat the current plight of the middle, working class and the poor of all races in Guyana. Everything else is just another day of hot air blowing.

I wasn't old enough to experience the british rule but if I have to chose the  best living I ever experience it would be under Desmond[persaud]Hoyte. I remember  Hoyte had control over criminials, he jailed HOI rabbi Washinton, a HOI gang member the PPP now hasin OP.

Bribery under Hoyte and even Burnham was more affordable, the same government papers I use to get for just one guana now them PPP bais want 300,000, that's like three cows..    

Point taken. You have a right to vote and make a difference in you life again.

Well our resident "pick up the soap" war hero should expound on their plight as it would lay the ground work for a discussion, rather than assume that we all know what exactly ails the cuffies. 

The Guyanese indians and blacks can learn a lot from their brothers and sisters in Suriname. I was surprised to find out how many Guyanese have been going to Suriname and filing for citizenship there. People there are far less concerned about the race of the person who is president, or which race the ruling party is aligned to. What people first want to know is what the government is going to do about their plight. No wonder the place has better roads, public transport, water and electricity supply, and bridges. They do mind thieving by government ministers, but they are willing to show a blind eye as long as their plight is not ignored and no money is spared in solving the needs of the people.

When these Guyanese move to Suriname, do they sit around waiting for the gov of Suriname to support them or are do they pull themselves up by the boot strap? This is the question that should be raised, not this lame excuse about lack of opportunity, which you folks cant prove. 

The Guyanese that have gone there that I have spoken to seem to have gone there for reasons such as better education for their kids, still close to Guyana, and better job opportunities. Many of them do business between Guyana and Suriname. But there are many GNI members who have ties to Guyana. Ask them as well.

But also consider why you fled Guyana for the US and file for US citizenship. Why did you not want to endure the hardship in Guyana?

T what are these better job opportunities?  Most open their own business in Suriname, they don't work for govt. In Guyana you folks expect govt to provide jobs for everyone and this is the downfall. 

Druggie thinks that blacks are criminals and are happy to be employed by people like his friends who hire them as mercenaries.

Better job opportunities also includes setting up your own business. So don't knock the efforts these people put in.

Druggie there are no where as many gov't jobs as there are blacks to fill them.  Even in the Burnham era most blacks did not work for gov't and this is even more true today.

Also if any one would a business who would be their customers and their employees.

I have never heard that Creole Surinamers are more entrepreneurial than Guyanese blacks.  The gov't of Suriname also employs way more people than the Guyana gov't.

How is the PPP preventing people from setting up business in Guyana? If Brazilians,Chinese, Surinamese, Jamaicans, Barbadians and Trinis can come to Guyana and set up businesses, there is no excuse why Guyanese can't. 

No doubt, you are correct, however you expect govt to create jobs for these folks. It is up to the private sector but Blacks also have to take the proper training to get these jobs. Funny how once they come overseas they are eager to take education and not depend on govt. 

Not true, my major complaint is that the afc/pnc tell Blacks that they are entitled to wealth by virtue of their race and don't need to make any effort to achieve.  

Suriname has adifferent ethnic composition.  In Guyana Africans and Indians are 73% of the population based on the 2002 census. The rest being mainly mixed and Amerindians. In Suriname Creoles (the equivalent to AfroGuyanese) and Indians are only around 50%.  There are other  large minority groups (Javanese, and Maroons) so political power is less concentrated in a contest between two large minority groups.  That is the reason.  The 2012 Suriname census indicates that MORE people now self identify as Maroons than do as Creoles, and there are definite tensions between these groups.

The PNC says no such thing.  People like David Hinds and Eric Phillips, who advocate for African empowerment also  do not say this. 

What both claim is that there is open bias against blacks, in other words blacks are being discriminated against.

Druggie if the USA operated like Guyana you would be unemployed because the white people who use your services would only hire whites.

Indian elites treat blacks in 2014 the same way that African elites treated Indians in 1976.  If there is no racism against blacks today then there wasn't against Indians under Burnham rule.

It is up to the gov't to create an environment that allows jobs to be created.  Racists like you put all the blame on Obama because there are few jobs, ignoring the fact that the Great Recession began under Bush.  So why different standards for Guyana?

It is also up to the private sector to hire the best person for the job.  Not just reserving the best jobs for one race if people, assigning the shyte jobs for the other.  The PPP claims that blacks are OVER represented at tertiary level institutions. At least that was true up to about 10 years ago.  So what's your babbling about them not obtaining proper training.  That is just your silly racist excuse to justify discriminating against them.

We are not discussing the racial percentage of Suriname, but their mentality as to how they view politicians and what they expect to see in return for their vote on polling days.

Tensions between the Marrons and the city slickers are far more complex than you are trying to imply. The root of that problem goes back to the days of the Redi Moesoes. Look it up. In a nutshell it has to do with the slaves who escaped slavery and those who waited to be emancipated. I had to do an essay on that for my college degree in Suriname as it happens.

I didn't imply anything other than to say that there are tensions between Creoles and Maroons and so there isn't some grand sense of unity between the two black groups in Suriname.  So even though the combined black identified population is 36%, it is actually 18% Creole and 18% Maroon, two separate groups. 

With these divisions in mind it means that the Indians and Javanese do not have to fear ethnic domination.  These two, even though both Asiatic in origin, are quite distinct, so the Creoles don't have to fear Asian domination.  The Maroons and the Amerindians probably leave the infighting to the coastlanders and join which ever groups which they think can deliver them benefits.

Suriname's politicians are not paragons of virtue.  Bouterse is an alleged criminal, and it turns out, so is his son. He was certainly a ruthless and bloodthirsty dictator in earlier times. Kind of like if  Burnham rose from the dead and resumed ruling Guyana.  Worse because Burnham was a paragon of peace when compared to Bouterse in his worst days.

The difference is that because there is no group in Suriname which can deliver more than 27% of the votes, in order to form a gov't, coalitions will have to be established.  This shifts the focus of "ah we pan tap" which dominates Guyanese politics, to who can we work with. 

It forces coalitions between ethnic and other interest groups. So it removes the incentive to vote race, because there aren't enough racial votes to allow ethnic domination.

Are you beginning to get the drift? A Bouterse gov't can only govern if it gets some degree of cross ethnic support.  If ethnic voting doesn't deliver the goods as people in Guyana, and to a lesser degree Trinidad & Tobago, think that it does, then it means that there is much less voting according to ethnicity, and much more along ideological lines, or for party seems as being able to pull their weight in a coalition govt.

So yes Mr T the differing ethnic composition of Suriname means that a party can only win if it gets enough votes to be able to woo minor parties over to its side.  So it has to demonstrate its capacity to govern, not only to the population at large, but to each party, once the elections are over.

It cannot scream, as does the PPP, that it doesn't need to work with other political parties, because no one party will come any where near being able to govern, unless it can work with others.

That is not entirely true. In the 70's the NPS (the main black party) and the VHP (the main indian party) were quite capable of securing a majority in order to govern. But after the NPS used the last election under Dutch rule to force through independence against the will of the majority of the population, voting patterns and politics took a different path. Voters became more aware of the dangers of a majority party rule.

Accidentally, this is one of the things that the voting system in Guyana and the UK suffer from. The will of the majority is sidelined in preference to the will of the ruling party. I personally believe that for new bills and laws a two third majority voting in parliament would be a far better and democratic method.

My understanding was that the Dutch wanted Suriname to become independent as they saw it as a drain, when compared to the wealthier Antillean islands which were more financially self sufficient.  They bribed the then gov't with massive aid, and that party saw an opportunity for patronage so rammed through independence.  But its not as if Surinamers had any real choice in that matter.

While the military and parties connected to the military fell into disrepute, quite clearly the ethnic composition of Suriname's population aided the fragmentation of their ethnically based parties, which remain ethnically based by the way. What happened was that the Creole, Indian and Javanese parties fragmented, maybe along ideological lines, but remained ethnically based. 

Because non of the ethnic parties had the power to win an election, as the PPP can in Guyana, and both the PNM and the UNC/COP can in T&T, this wasn't possible in Suriname. 

So as much as the politicians might have loved to maintain a base to allow ethnic domination, the division of Suriname into FOUR ethnic blocs Creole/Mixed, Indian, Javanese and Maroon, prevents that.  What this forces are cross ethnic alliances as parties must form POST election coalitions to run. 

Guyanese I believe are ready for an alternative, but our binary ethnic conflict means that people fal back on racial voting out of fear of being ethnically dominated.  That is impossible in Suriname, so ethnic parties have split, and new parties have emerged.  The AFC has this problem in that in both 2008 and 2012 they actually enjoyed more support than the votes that they actually received.  Problem. When Indians and African/Mixed went to vote ethnic paranoia came in so they defaulted back to race vote.

The 2/3 "super majority" rule is the only way to get Guyana out of its quagmire.  As of now the PPP thinks that it can get 50%+1 by bribing enough Amerindians and blacks to support them, in addition to maintaining a lock on the Indian vote, through keeping them ethnically paranoid.  This becomes impossible with a 2/3 rule as the PPP will never get more than that 10% sliver of the African/Mixed vote. It will have to seriously dialogue with APNU.

What might well end up happening is that more people who are dissatisfied with the PPP and the PNC will be enticed to leave, weakening those parties.  As each ethnic group becomes assured that ethnic domination will be less possible, at least not politically, its possible that they might vote their hopes and not their fears.

I do know that up to the 1970s Suriname had all the ethnic tensions that Guyana had, even if not the ethnic violence.

The Dutch were more than happy to grant Suriname independence and gave them the equivalent of about U$2Billion in grants as part of the deal. But the Suriname folks were eyeing more important things that were part of being a colony. One was the pathway to a university education in Holland after finishing college in Suriname. On the same note, Dutch teachers were part of the landscape and their higher salaries were paid by Holland. Then you also had the security offered by Dutch troops against racial tensions and warmongering talks with Guyana. There was also the ease with which People from Suriname could emigrate to Holland and visa versa.

Luckily the situation is now reasonably stable again, and white Dutch people have been coming to live in Suriname. The Euro is now legal tender in the country alongside the U$ and the Suriname $. Even the army and police force have white officers again.

Is funny how there katahars kuhlis saying Indians should make the effort, then you have their cheerleaders egging them on.  Afros are some of the most racists people in Guyana.  Afros don't fully accept Indian as equal in Guyana, a historical issue.  Look how the Indo-katahars in the AFC going and proudly kissing up with the PNC and feel elated socializing with the PNC's Afro leadership.  How many of the Afros do the same vis-a-vis the PPP.  No, instead when the Afros exit the AFC, where do the go an take the AFC's plans, to the PNC.  Just ask KishanB.

Bhai, A SMALL group of Indians think appeasing and ASS KISSING is the answer. And you are right, when I read the comments of some of them here I usually have a good Laff.  Like I always tell Caribj when he tries to paint me as a Racist: "Look who is talking"

Base and Pavi, it would be quite an education for you both to read the dialog between CaribJ and T.

This dialog speaks to a lot of truth about ethnic voting (binary in Guyana - see AFC support not reflecting in their votes on polling day; and tripartite in Suriname).

Seriously, put aside the political beliefs for a moment and ask yourselves why issues-voting cannot see the daylight and why ethnic-voting is endemic. You will then see all the openings for poor governance. Then uyou can resume the visceral fear of having a party dominated by the other ethnic group governing the nation. Try this intellectual exercise for a brief moment.

Kari, I don't care too SHIT about Suriname. I want you to disprove what Baseman stated above and NOT do any appeasing and ASS KISSING.

It is a sentiment wrought of reciprocal competition for the state with the presidency as a prize. Africans do not have any cultural prohibitions to marrying another race. That is an Indian taboo. I also do not consider that racism. I consider racism is the overt rationalizing of the idea of superiority.

You like the Rev if firmly entrenched to supporting the perceptions that one side hates the other and for that one side of the other must do what ever its can to maintain an edge. Some black people sees their only chance to exercising power is to veto it by violence and protests. The Indian side sees their small numerical margin as enough o insist they have a democracy without recognizing it means shutting out almost one half of the population. The PPP defends this. It is the reason they insist on hiding behind the autocratic privileges of the PNC constitution.

We need to get out of this stalemate where we fight low level race wars constantly. We can only do that with a new constitution optimized to eliminate the competition for the office of the Presidency as an ethnic based prize and opportunity to loot the state unchecked. Progressive people need to escape the mental trap of seeing ourselves only in terms of race and recognizing we are at each other throat because of politics so we need to solve the politics. It is not only unintellectual to  frame  mental states in terms of race. It is unintellectual to be trapped by this state of ignorance and continue to enable it in our society.

Here! Here!