Dear Editor,
It must now be absolutely clear to all our fellow Guyanese that our political culture is being developed along lines that will see us forever mired in controversy and a spirit of non-cooperation and non-compromise.
This is further exacerbated by other players on the national spectrum who should have been the instruments of inculcating some measure of sanity into our debates and decisions. These include the bar, human rights and other associations in society, the media, and other functionaries who should be at least objective and all-inclusive in their utterances. Instead we find that most of these are always consistent with their posture of antagonism and condemnation. Further, we should not delude ourselves into believing that this culture would end with any change in the political structure.
The way forward towards the advancement of the affairs of our country must surely lie in much self-examination of our individual stances and actions in each of the events being played out nationally. This necessitates that we should all understand and appreciate that we are all human beings, with all of us having some amount of goodness, with none of us perfect, and with all of us subject to the strains of daily life, especially in such a divided state in which we find ourselves, expressly because of this vast divide which we have created in our beloved country.
I appeal to all our people, however they are involved and in whatever they are now occupied, to realise that our salvation as a people lies in the fact that we all bear responsibility for the way things are, and we all need to conduct this self-examination and deal with one another empathically, more compassionately and with a large dose of brotherliness in our actions.
This would prove not so problematic if we regard our nation as one large family, as it virtually is, and deal with one another as we would with members of our own household – with a spirit of empathy, compassion and earnest desire to create real peace, justice, equality and national unity in our nation.
Yours faithfully,
Roy Paul,
