Dear Editor,
So now there is a quest for a national alliance. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Suddenly, there is receptivity and interest in outreach and political bonding. We need to be wary of more of the same political bondage that has prevailed for two decades.
Now that the numbers are unfavourable and threatening, consensus building is searching for a toehold, some may say. Some may also say that this is shared governance by another name. Others may say that a clever careful political sanity dawns. But I say who wants to be the new “Civic?” Who desires to be a party to overlook and perpetuate the appalling wrongdoing that has been experienced here? Whatever the thought processes of the experts and analysts, here is my position.
After 28 years of PNC misrule and pain, there was a clean break, and a believed fresh, new start in 1992. It is the way it should have been. Today, I say that after 22 years of unparalleled thievery and agony, there ought to be an identical restart in 2014 or 2015. But let it be a restart with another group, without the dirty association and any entangling attachment with the ruling status quo.
Some will submit that this is not politically practical or numerically significant to happen in a clear-cut, definitive manner. Still, I strongly advise against the recycling of old and corrupted and shrivelled wineskins in new apparel. I hope that no local political group is so craven, so contemptuous as to ignore the vast immeasurable perversities inflicted upon the citizenry in the last 22 years. I do hope that none is so opportunistic, none so traitorous to the people of this country.
Indeed, it is time for the Jagdeo-Ramotar axis of self-interest to come to an ignominious end. This axis has shackled Guyanese for too long and in ways too ugly and sordid and utterly vulgar for there to be the gloss, the remediating cover of a ‘national alliance.’
Therefore, let there be a new start. But let it be without those now scrambling to retain the reins of power by any means possible.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall