Dear Editor,
I refer to Prime Minister Samuel Hinds’ letter in Saturday’s Stabroek News captioned ‘The road on which Granger, Roopnaraine, Solomon and Norton are taking Linden/Region 10 is a dead end.’
What this letter tells me is that PM Hinds is a mature leader. Here he is way out in front taking a position to defuse a potentially developing national crisis. In the 21 years he held this position no one has ever heard of any scandal emanating from his office.
Unfortunately, PM Hinds is just a token of a different ethnicity, and because of this he could not ever be considered to succeed to the presidency. A president retires, a president is term-limited; no matter what circumstance creates the vacancy, he still could not be considered for the position.
These characteristics of Mr Hinds and the position he holds define Guyana’s ethnic politics. And that’s why we have all these problems ‒ problems that stem largely from the Guyanese peoples’ perceptions about our ethnic politics.
I would urge Mr Hinds to start demanding full membership, rights and privileges of the PPP, including being eligible for consideration as the party’s future presidential candidate. In fact after 21 years of distinguished and loyal service to the PPP in the position of Prime Minister, he should be offered full membership. He shouldn’t have to demand it. Also the widely held perception of the so-called PPP/Civic construct is a fraud, and though intended in 1991-92 to project a racially-balanced government, it no longer serves that purpose. It is now a myth, and Mr Hinds himself should take the initiative to blow up this myth.
Dr Vishnu Bisram (congratulations on his doctorate, revealed in KN, Jan 24) asked pointedly: “How can you have someone of a different ethnicity be elected to an ethnic party?” This question was both a revelation and a bombshell. I did not know the PPP and PNC were legally constituted ethnic parties. I always thought they came to be perceived as ethnic parties because of the ethnic politics they practised over the last 60 years, and that the parties themselves could take measures to change the way they are perceived.
Dr Bisram firmly believes PPP and PNC are legally constituted ethnic parties, and further that “it would be illogical” to elect an African-Guyanese and an Indian-Guyanese to head the PPP and PNC, respectively. Both PPP and PNC need to state publicly whether they are in fact legally constituted ethnic parties.
Guyana is a largely a multi-racial society with two major ethnic groups making up about 73 per cent of the electorate. To have legally constituted ethnic parties is an anachronism in diverse societies. The Obama model can teach us in Guyana a lot about how to change our politics and become a more perfect multi-racial democracy. Not a ‘democracy’ in which one perceived ethnic party rules forever, thanks to the numerical majority of that group from which it draws practically all its support. This is a major deficiency in the flawed democracy that prevails in Guyana.
Editor, your esteemed newspaper should not pay scant attention to the issue I raise in this letter. In fact I should remind you that SN read like a broadsheet for free and fair elections in the years preceding 1992. SN should again take up this cause for a more perfect multi-racial democracy.
To this end, I urge you to challenge the PPP and PNC to state publicly whether they are in fact legally constituted ethnic parties.
I also wish to state categorically that I support US Ambassador Brent Hardt’s LEAD project, as I firmly believe it would help Guyana evolve into a genuine multi-racial democracy, one in which a significant pool of swing voters comprising all ethnic groups would emerge. And that such a development would cause the baton of power to pass to a new party or coalition of parties every two or three election cycles. Both the PPP and PNC stand to benefit from the LEAD project. They both cannot dismount from the proverbial tiger in politics on their own, but the LEAD project would provide that assistance.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud