Dear Editor,
It is obvious that the greatest American political thinker Tom Paine had no influence on the diplomatic training of Ambassador Dr Brent Hardt. But Ambassador Hardt is not alone in this respect. After all Tom Paine is held up as an example of everything bad ever since the day he was termed “a dirty little atheist” by Theodore Roosevelt. Paine’s writing was clearly anathema to Mr Hardt.
The speeches by Minister Priya Manickchand and Ambassador Hardt in my view brought to the forefront the meaning of freedom and independence. Ambassador Hardt’s speech conjured up all the vestiges of colonialism we fought against while acting Minister Manickchand’s reply spoke to the lofty principles and ideals of freedom and independence which we fought for and won and hold so dear to us as a people.
In this regard, I am reminded of Tom Paine’s most beautiful statement: “Independence is my happiness and I view all things as they are without regard to place or person. My country is the world and my religion is to do good.”
Ms Manickchand’s “No!” to Mr Hardt’s harking back to the colonial era served as a poignant reminder of Mahatma Gandhi’s warning that, “A no uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a yes uttered merely to please or worse, to avoid trouble”
What occurred on that eventful evening at Turkeyen was reminiscent of a governor talking down to the serfs in the type of society that has gone down as backward in the annals of history.
Incidentally, come 2016, we will be celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of our country’s Independence. I sincerely hope we will celebrate the occasion in grand style. And that from next year 2015 government will launch discussion fora countrywide so that the truth will be told of the struggle for Guyana’s Independence. And just as we are witnessing the revelations emanating from the Rodney Commission of Inquiry, in the same way the truth must be told about the real fighters for our country’s Independence.
Those who booed and heckled Ms Manickchand at the Turkeyen residence made no contribution to either the struggle for Independence or against Burnham’s dictatorial rule. They most likely connived on behalf of their political sponsors to uphold the vestiges of neo-colonialism and bureaucratic capitalism under the much hated Burnham dictatorship.
Talk about putting country first? It took a reception at the house of an Ambassador for us to see those who have no faith in the symbols of our Independence express in so ugly a fashion, their preference to nibble at the grass nourished by the Hudson and the Potomac Rivers.
Their loathsome and disgusting display of anti-nationalism was carried as far as to proudly proclaim that acting Minister Manickchand did not speak for them, thus raising the question, if Ms Manickchand did not speak for them, then who did? Theirein lies their open betrayal of the virtues of nationhood and self-respect for country and people.
This is apropos another poignant reminder of the words of our National Anthem:
Dear Land of Guyana, to you will we give
Our homage, our service, each day that we live;
God guard you great Mother and make us to be
More worthy our heritage – land of the free.
Are those who booed and heckled Ms Manickchand truly “worthy [of] our heritage”? Are they really “heirs of the pains” from whom we were born?
Ambassador Hardt must have been well pleased as he boarded the plane on his last journey from our beautiful country that he left behind a coterie of inveterate critics whose vapid bleatings and platitudinous pretensions at justice merely serve to invoke and imitate those who hold up Tom Paine as the worst example to follow.
Yours faithfully,
Clement J Rohee
General Secretary
People’s Progressive Party
