The Multiracial Patriotic Movement (MPM) has been launched with the intent of transforming the socioeconomic processes of the country by changing the “backward thinking” of entrenched racism, according to its leader Lin-Jay Harry-Voglezon.
The group was launched last Wednesday at YMCA on Thomas Lands with about 50 people attending, including Mayor Hamilton Green, University of Guyana Registrar Vincent Alexander and AFC General Secretary Sextus Edwards.
Delivering the feature address Harry-Voglezon stated that the MPM was not a political party though its interest would be political among other things.
“It is intended to be a mass-based non-governmental movement; advocative in nature. It is multidimensional in interest and focus; it is political, it is economic, it is social, it is cultural and in totality developmental.”
According to him, racism is at the core of Guyana’s developmental issues and the changes have to be done at the structural and mental levels. He added that some people would resist the changes and transformation would have to use the point of common good to shape a better society. The proper leader, he said, has to be produced who would understand this and develop the kind of coping mechanisms to deal with that.
“That is why, among other things, the MPM is taking as a priority the establishment of a democratic college. We’ve already start talking about constructing the syllabus and curriculum and so on but that institution will be one to train people in leadership, management, administration, organisation, you name it, as it relates to management of people.”
He said he believed Guyanese have the capacity to do great things but the environment to do so needs to be created which is what the MPM intends to do. The group, he said, will deal with the issues people do not want to talk about since they came together give to make Guyana a better place where people could feel safe and “have a fair and reasonable opportunity to succeed and realise their dreams.”
The MPM leader said it was not a “fly-by-night” movement since he has been talking with fellow group member Mohammed Shaw for years about transforming the local political landscape and they have come up with a document of which hundreds of copies have been circulated throughout the country.
Successive
generations
“We believe that would be a reasonable basis for which we could catalyze a process of thinking in this country because the movement is not intended to be that for myself and Shaw. It is not our intent to own this movement,” he said
According to Harry-Voglezon, they may not realise some of the objectives in the document during their lifetimes but they hope that successive generations could build on it.
The MPM leader, an A-Levels teacher at Queen’s College, also addressed issues in the existing political milieu including calls for the PNC to apologise for its past misdeeds.
“Let it be on record that the historical evidence of this country has shown that you do not have one good people and one bad people, one good party and one bad party. The evidence has shown that both sides have done good and they have done bad. Time will tell who has done worse,” he said.
He declared that if it is legitimate to ask the PNC to come clean on its wrongs then the MPM calls on the PPP to also “account for its sins to the people of this country.
“We cannot go forward until as a people we reach that point where we can acknowledge our wrongness and our rightness; that would be the only authentic basis for reconciliation,” he said.
According to Harry-Voglezon, Guyana remains in an “ethnic cold war” which if not addressed in a serious and honest way could see the nation become “a fourth world country.” People are developing ethnic networks which are undermining professionalism, effective accountability, integrity and the other virtues of the nation, he said.
“Whether you have an alliance for a new government, many of the conditions will remain the same, the outcomes will remain the same unless we decide to treat the fundamentals. We have to decide who must rule and how we must rule.”
The state must not be structured in a way that would give the perception that any one ethnic group is more important, capable or trustworthy than another, the MPM leader said, but in a manner all of its people can trust.
According to Harry-Voglezon, transformation needs to take place and this is not a matter of having roads and buildings but rather about impacting on the thinking processes of the people.
Among the group’s aims as set out in the circulated document are intentions to accelerate the rate of economic growth through political and socio-economic transformation; deepen the processes of government accountability; advance racial/ethnic relations; and improve the structures of governance.
Shaw and Malcolm De Freitas also delivered remarks at the event.
