Dear Editor,
It is interesting to observe the prelude to the battle for leadership of the PPP. It is also quite worrying. While contestants are now coming forward with alacrity and boldness to announce their willingness to be the next PPP presidential candidate, these sallies are unaccompanied by any arousing mission statement or the articulation of any grandes pensées as the French would put it. One hopeful even puts forward the dubious distinction of having never been bitten by an ungulate as his claim to the presidency! This begs the question: where are our conviction politicians? In any search to identify potential presidential candidates a show of hands is the easiest part of the exercise. I imagine that any sane person inclined to vote for this moribund party would ask of a potential leader: What is this guy going to do for me – going to do for us? Presumably those inclined to ask: What have you done for me lately? are already on the ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ or the ‘Last Train to San Fernando.’
Missing from our ruling politics is the type or quality of politician who would announce unequivocally and maybe against all odds, that his/her intention is to transform Guyana into a developed country by 2030 or even make us the breadbasket of the Caribbean by 2020 or better still, increase the nation’s per capital GDP by 40% and per capita income by 50% in the next 5 to 10 years.
I am aware that some of the contestants may be good men and true (two of them are in my view), but this lack of conviction politics and fresh ideas, reduces the choice of presidential candidate to nothing but a sophisticated brain teaser in the eeny, meeny, miney, mo genre, and this is very disconcerting.
Come on fellows surely your can do better than just stick your thumbs in the air?
Yours faithfully,
F Hamley Case