Dear Editor,
It troubles me, as it must most Guyanese who have lived through decades of continuous political decay, that as the end of the first decade of the 21st century approaches we are nowhere near overcoming the burden of a political culture which resides mainly in the two political parties which ironically were responsible for leading us out of the colonial era into nationhood
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I would like to believe that this is not what the founding leaders of these parties originally set out to do, but somewhere along the way they got caught up in their crazy over-inflated egos.
This blight of a sad political culture has destroyed most of our hopes of taking our place proudly among the nations of the world, and sharing with them our rich talents in the fields of education, sport and social culture. Instead we have had to put-up with incompetent leadership that is obsessed with its own collective tribal ‘We are right and they are wrong’ mentality, whereby both sides identify only with their own story, making them both incapable of seeing that another perspective may exist and also be valid.
This insane situation has destroyed and separated our people, our economy and our will to rise above it. It has driven our political leadership to resort to any measure necessary to defend and hold on to their power base, while at the same time sinking our country deeper and deeper into chaos and driving our people into self-imposed exile, mostly to get away from the unending madness.
In such an environment real development cannot take place, because it is perceived as a threat to the power base, thus creating a prime environment for illegal business activities as well as for those operators who are willing to toe the line and pay the fiddler.
On account of this, poor underpaid Guyanese unfortunately have to take up the slack by paying a hefty 16% VAT in order to pay for the extravagance of propping up a system which strangles natural economic growth.
Every time I run into a Guyanese outside Guyana he tries so hard to defend his Guyana, which reminds me of myself before I self-exiled; then invariably and reluctantly they would admit that we have messed up, and that some smaller countries than ours who though not without problems of their own have done much better than us with much less than we have.
We can only pray to our creator that the day will come when we will be delivered from this madness by a new system and style of progressive leadership that is not consumed by the collective ego, but one that sees all as equals who are ready to lay down their all for their country in quest of a better and more comfortable life, and more importantly to be truly proud Guyanese in every sense of the term.
Yours faithfully,
Bernard Ramsay
