Dear Editor,
A blogger in yesterday’s SN making light humour of the PPP’s prime ministerial candidate, Elizabeth Harper, forced me to reflect on the role she is playing in Guyanese politics. Here it is:
I have taken a position on this lady. I have publicly urged her to use her skills to negotiate for full membership rights of the PPP and the right to succeed to the presidency in the event there is a vacancy in that office. She doesn’t respond. She seems happy to serve as a window-dresser.
Is she in denial that the PPP is nothing but an ethnic party? Only Indians can be the leader of that party, and this is happening in a multi-racial society. The campaign so far has exposed the party’s ethnic strategy. This whole set-up (you can call it a template) of the PPP – an Indian leader, with a window-dresser African – is an anachronism in this 15th year in a new century, in a post-Obama world. The PPP needs her face to show they have a balanced ticket. Great, but this gives her leverage to change the party into a multi-racial one and more importantly to change the politics of the land.
In the long term this would be good for the PPP, the party would have an Indian base, but with its genuine multi-racial credentials, it would be easier for it to win African-Guyanese support.
No party has any business governing a multi-racial society like Guyana’s, if it cannot win broad cross-racial support. The PPP has never won more than five per cent African-support, and that, in my opinion, makes it unqualified to govern Guyana. So its priority should be on winning at least 12-15 per cent African support. And, it could not possibly achieve that goal, if it is so determined to continue using African-Guyanese as window-essers.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
