Dear Editor,
I have read the recent letters by Minette Bacchus, Lincoln Lewis and then Rickford Burke on the related matter of Vanessa Kissoon. There were contentions promoted which were reasonable but there is an overall deceptiveness at work here. I have kept away from the political party club and became a member of ACDA because with ACDA there was no office seeking obsessions or imaginary turf or self-interests to protect. I say the latter because in early 2012 at Channel 9 doing an ACDA or the Waddell memorial programme, I got into discourse on the options of APNU with some political people there. One objected to Granger because he wasn’t a ‘Politician’ and he slept early. I added that he was also awake earlier than he. I ended the conversation by asserting the reality that because he wasn’t a politician he would throw to the wall anyone who put their sticky fingers into the campaign jar, neither would other vices be accommodated.
I was astounded by the hostility from this man. This character seemed to have forgotten that political positions are not self-serving legacies but the right to act and think in the interest of the collective.
APNU was a welcome evolution of our stagnant local politics, so why the petulance? This is not only with politicians. I was there when a Union head called the Black Clothes under the late Chavez ’Fraser’ to beat up members of his union after this coward had betrayed them with a Faustian self-serving deal, calling off a legitimate strike and breaking the ‘Will ’of the people.
I and most Guyanese saw footage of what had transpired at Linden during Granger’s recent visit. This group of cadres did not come to this meeting as a group with their petition of complaints to be addressed, they came with placards to upset, even break up the meeting, these were foot soldiers. On talking to other Lindeners, I was told that the meeting inside was well-attended. Are there a few people in the PNC who are so unnerved by what APNU embodies that they are prepared to mislead good people to cover their own obvious political inadequacies?
It was Ronald Waddell who propelled me into politics after many years; the institutional corruption, veiled racism and lack of integrity of the PPP had left us no choice. Linden has had its stream of flawed political representation during the ‘Jagdeo/Roger Khan’ years. Bynoe, who misled and betrayed causing death and mayhem, then there were those that had abandoned their responsibilities, Kadir, Mingo, Sandra Adams. To mention a few who should have known better. What I have failed to recognise in any of the letters against Granger is his failure to address a list of stated contentions that are impeding the lives of Lindeners that APNU can act upon. I cannot answer anyone who asks what is it that APNU is not addressing on behalf of Linden? Linden cannot be just the cradle for a group of disgruntled egos, the agenda has to be bigger, especially at a time when the gross mismanagement of this nation is at its height under this tactless group of political hustlers, who now define the PPP, whose continued stay in office is by the day detrimental to us and our children and grandchildren born and unborn.
Yours faithfully,
Barrington Braithwaite
