Dear Editor,
There are still many good, experienced, skilled and mature people in the leadership of the real PPP like Roger Luncheon, Cde Donald, Cde Navin and Ralph Ramkarran, Cde Moses, Robeson Benn and a few others but the sad fact is they are now a minority in the Government. These Jaganites are slowly being vanquished in the Government and have been replaced by “yes men”, who are only trained in one area, how to keep power by any means necessary, regardless of the consequences for country and people. Well history has proven that yes men have never brought any good to any society. The evidence continues to unfold as this policy of propping up the yes men has only brought disrepute to our country, our Government and our Guyanese society.
The graveyard of history is filled with this exact situation. Just as an example, King Henry VIII had a Chief Minister called Thomas Cromwell. He was the most powerful man in the empire after the King since he orchestrated the cleavage from the Pope so that the King could marry his second wife Anne Boleyn. Sir Thomas’ loyalty was beyond any doubt, because he subsequently made way for wife No. 3 by organising the beheading of Anne Boleyn. However, he fell out with the King since his recommendation for wife No. 4 was not to the King’s liking but the King has to go ahead with the marriage unless he wanted to risk a vital German alliance. From that day onwards, the clock started to tick on Thomas Cromwell’s life. He was arrested and held at the King’s pleasure until the marriage to wife No.4 was annulled and was beheaded on the day the King married wife No. 5. King Henry VIII died politically a broken man. An entire Kingdom had to pay for the whims and fancy of one King. Are we as a state heading in that direction, where the nation has to suffer because of the personal fantasies of one person and pursue a plebiscite even though it is sub-optimal for the nation? The real PPP does not support it, the AFC does not support it and the PNC does not support it based on their latest uttering, so who really supports this plan?
Well I was trained never to trust the words of desperate politicians and the PNC leadership is desperate for a taste of power. Further, the PNC is on the verge of being dethroned as the official opposition and thus a desperate party leadership is capable of doing desperate things. That is why we must never discount the special treatment that is being meted out to the PNC leadership by the Jagdeo clan. The Jagdeo government is using all the state apparatus to harass the AFC leadership but the same rules do not apply for the PNC leadership. Why are Ramjattan’s taxes only of interest to Jagdeo and not Corbin’s? Why is Ramjattan’s duty-free concession of interest to the government and not Corbin’s? Why are the security arrangements of the AFC of interest to the government but yet to this day, 12 years after the violence of 1997, a security scan was never done of Congress Place to assess the number of weapons possibly in its possession and how many are legally owned?
This makes political life in Guyana very interesting since I was schooled with the philosophy that Indo-Guyanese will eat salt and rice but they will never vote PNC. So why this adventure between the Committee for the Re-election of Jagdeo (CRJ) and the PNC? Desperate politicians will take desperate measure to cling on to power. The reality in Guyana is that the masses are really suffering for the first time since 1992 and it is filtering through, thus all political forces are expected to suffer electorally save and except the AFC. I have evidence of die-hard Berbician families, who will be voting for the AFC for the first time, people who never ever considered any other party but the PPP. The real PPP have to take a stand and strategically dump Jagdeo as they move closer to the elections or else their electoral strength will suffer. With the advent of the internet, people are not willing to accept the usual crap like globalisation as the cause of economic misery when countries that are similarly endowed like Guyana such as Mauritius, are persevering upward on the economic ladder. Guyana is a rich country; it just required intellectually rich leadership to unleash that potential and the people know this fact and are not willing to accept another excuse this time.
However, the biggest surprise to me was the rate of migration to the AFC of those voters who traditionally did not vote for the PPP. Thus, they are expected to do much better in the 2011 elections if they use the PPP system of getting the voters out. The AFC has to start its work now. To do very well, the AFC must get to meet members in each and every village and ward in Guyana in a very personal way. The campaign wheel must slowly begin to turn now.
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh