Dear Editor,
My letter exposing Hydar Ally’s misplaced logic in comparing the performance of a present government for 18 years to the previous one raised the ire of some. This constant act of digging up history is getting rather mundane. Both set of political hacks that ran this nation into the ground have tried revision and camouflage as effectively as blame. They think people are stupid. They think the good old days of political fear, ignorance and chicanery are alive. That one must simply mention PPP or PNC and an entire group will herd itself into a corner and assume either the foetal or confrontational position. They are nothing but prehistoric relics wasting time and words when a nation needs help, desperately. They think their political skulduggery and slash and burn politics have a place in Guyana. Here’s the truth about this nation: more than 40% of this population was born after 1992. Another significant percentage has spent more time under the PPP than the PNC. The bottom line: the majority of this nation was born after the PPP came to office or have spent most of their lives living under the PPP. It is the only life they have experienced.
So these people couldn’t care less about history from the perspective of ethnic aggrandisement and blameworthiness. They grew up in a Guyana in the grips of 18 years of PPP rule. They know corruption. They know drug cartels and trafficking. They know unbridled murder. They know vicious escalating crime. They know unfair redistribution of wealth. They know crushing taxes. They know VAT. They know blackouts. They know waste, mismanagement, squandering and misfeasance. They know bribery very well. They know of criminals fighting criminals and claiming to be legitimate crime-fighters. They know extra-judicial killings. They know economic, political and social marginalization. They know contracts going to certain people. They know the failure of sugar. They know the climb in the cost of living. They know of loss of morality, integrity, decency and dignity. They know of men in power abusing it. They know of rules being bent to the will of a few. They know no jobs. They know how to run to America, Canada, the Caribbean and Europe. They know to leave is better than to remain. They know that they could wait 6 hours at a passport office to get six minutes of service. They know that any one of them could become a victim of a serious crime. They have seen the rich getting richer and the enrichment of the chosen while the poor sink deeper into the mud.
So the PNC bogeyman game isn’t working like it did before. When archaic political specimens mention PNC at every turn these voters do not know of what is spoken. For this is their struggle. And they are still struggling. Despite washed away roads and floating wharves. For people who have lived this life of struggle it is the only thing they know. They will judge the PPP by what it has delivered to them in their experience. The fact that a broken road under the PNC was fixed by the PPP is not the issue to those born after 1992. The issue is that the road has washed away every rainy season or had to be repaired virtually every month or was poorly built or that bribery took place or that rampant corruption is associated with the road or that the same contractor who failed keeps getting the contract to repair the road or that their taxes are being wasted on the road or that waste, incompetence, corruption, mismanagement and failure have been associated with this road. So telling people who never lived under or can’t remember the transgressions of the PNC will not minimize the very specific shortcomings of the PPP. A majority of this nation will judge the PPP by its own actions and not the historical actions of previous administrations.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
