Dear Editor,
I have followed Ms Stella Ramsaroop’s column over the past few months, but having read her conclusion in your 10th September edition, I can hold my tongue no longer.
My father is, as she says, “old school” in many ways – some of his views are conservative and traditional, I agree. (I know, I left for and returned from the disco under his very eyes.) But I think Ms. Ramsaroop fails to understand that having certain standards does not translate into the compulsion to impose them on others. Let me state absolutely that David Granger is too open-minded and respectful of the individual rights of others to expect or demand his own preferences of them. (And yes, this includes the subject of his daughter’s dress.)
The other point with which I disagree, father or not, is her assumption that one woman will vote for another on the basis of gender alone. Rack my woman’s brain as I might, I cannot think why any woman would ignore character, honesty, principles, policy, proposals, record, intellect and initiative because the candidate before her is also female.
Any woman or man who possesses the qualities we admire and require in a leader should win our vote. Of Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Imelda Marcos, we know which was the abusive, self-serving politician and which had the acumen and ability to move her nation forward.
Remember, Ms Ramsaroop, that the President who presented a woman to the nation as his wife and then said she was not; who “treated [her] like trash and put [her] out of [her] home with nothing but the clothes on [her] back”; was proposed, pushed and installed by our only female President yet. The females in this President’s government have uttered nary a word of criticism, at least in public.
We Guyanese women are not that simplistic, nor are we easily led. Come the General Elections, we shall be voting for the Presidency of our country. David Granger has spent his adult life working to provide a better life for his own daughters, and has worked unheralded for years examining and trying to improve the lives of women throughout this country. As President of Guyana he shall do no less.
We all want better lives for our daughters, and sons. This is not a decision to be taken lightly. Think.
Yours faithfully,
Han Granger-Gaskin