Dear Editor,
I refer to the letter which appeared in the Guyana Chronicle dated January 15 and captioned ‘Greenidge should have adhered to decorum.’ It was written by one Tharamattie Ramdehol.
One of the most worrying aspects of public debate on political issues and commentary in Guyana is the extent to which persons get involved without taking the trouble to do more than come to the defence of the government in office without even bothering to read the material they cite or to look at the facts. A few weeks ago saw evidence of this in a letter attacking Mr Greenidge and falsely claiming he had said some rather silly things. The same letter also claimed that he had been responsible for actions and policies which had been implemented at a time when he was studying abroad and then working in Africa. In the most recent case, a certain T Ramdehol, suggested that in his tribute to Winston Murray, Mr Greenidge attacked the PPP government. Mr Greenidge actually referred to the problems the country had been experiencing over the last few decades, which means 30 to 40 years, as a nightmare. Those years included the years when the PNC was in office so he could not be attacking the PPP – though they do dream of being in power for as long as that, but happily, that is only a dream. Nowhere in the paragraph that the government cited is there reference to the economy and yet Mr Ramdehol insists that: “Greenidge publicly criticised the government of Guyana’s economic framework.”
In fact on December 19, Demerara Waves, which was the cause of this initial confusion over what Mr Greenidge said, published the actual passage which clearly showed that the paper’s quotation was false. In spite of this Mr Ramdehol argues that this criticism of the government was likely to damage the country’s prospects of development: ‘‘Guyana’s development may have been undermined as a result of his stance.”
It is clear that the writer is unaware that the current government’s economic, social and political policies are routinely criticized by the multilateral financial institutions and their support is not based on a requirement that the government attract no domestic criticism of its policies. At any rate, the belief that when Mr Greenidge says that Guyana can get out of its difficulties , or when he says that the country could do better with visionary leadership is damaging, is too silly for words.
Is Mr Ramdehol aware that both Dr Misir and Dr Odeen Ishmael used the same terms as Mr Greenidge in describing some events during the same periods referred to by Mr Greenidge? Well, they have.
Is it possible for Mr Ramdehol and other PPP supporters to focus on truth in these debates rather than fabricate information and events in order to come to the defence of the indefensible?
Yours faithfully,
R M Austin
