Dear Editor,
In ‘The AFC must be steadfast to its vision and give the people of Guyana a chance to rally behind it’ (SN, August 15), Mr Khemraj Ramjattan claimed that I made a statement that I did not make and then erroneously accused me of inconsistency and perhaps even opportunism. Mr Ramjattan paraphrased me as saying that: “people have always voted and will continue to vote race.”
“Strange this,” he exclaimed, “…very strange! I have heard him cogently argue the exact opposite while he was a government minister in the PPP.” He then proceeded to, “categorically reject Dr Jeffrey’s assertion that people will never cease to vote race.” The question for Mr Ramjattan is: where did I make such a statement?
One of the first lessons in politics, which Mr Ramjattan would do well to note in the present context, is that one should “never say never.” What I did say was, “Ethnic voting has been with us for over half a century and nothing I have heard so far has yet convinced me that this pattern will not hold at the next elections.” Indeed, I continued to explain that: “I find a good degree of contradiction in the contention of many of the PPP/C’s critics that that party is massively favouring Indians but that significant numbers of Indians will vote against it! Even in normal political situations holding this view would require an enormous imagination!” (‘A unitary opposition slate is a critical component if government is to be captured and governance transformed’ SN, August13)
Secondly, Mr Ramjattan implied that I suggested that, “whatever the wrongs of the PNC and its leadership may have been (and, like those of the PPP, they are many), one should ignore them all and jump into a broad-based big tent with them, not knowing very well what it is that the contemporary PNC and its leadership stand for.” I did argue: “A unitary opposition slate at the next general election is a critical component if government is to be captured and governance transformed,” but nowhere did I say that one should enter unknowingly into such an arrangement. Indeed, I opined that “to be successful, any future partnership needs to exude a clear picture as to why it wishes to take government. In our time, this means that it must be transparent about its major objectives, and I want to suggest that a constitutional transformation of the nature of government, and not any airy-fairy notion of putting so-called ‘good’ people to run the same old structures, is a minimum requirement if our wish is to break the cycle of poverty.”
There is much that we could question about both the PNC and PPP. But as we indulge in our high-mindedness, we should remember that political parties do not exist in a vacuum: they are a part and very reflective of their environments. The AFC is less than a decade old, but look at the kinds of problem it already faces. The solution is to find a realistic balance between our idealism and the practical requirements of the day.
Yours faithfully,
Henry B Jeffrey
