Dear Editor,
In June, I will be 21 years old. This is the first electoral cycle in which I will be registered to vote. Though I am but a fingerling, I consider myself quite knowledgable about our nation’s troubled economic and political history, and while I am not so disingenuous as to suggest that the statist economic policies and authoritarian governance post-independence did not slow us down in development terms, I am not so blind as to believe it was all the work of one political entity operating on a complete whim and without, in some instances, the “critical support” of others.
Despite what the case may be, the incumbent PPP/C has been able, through deployment of its ethnic mobilizing and propagandizing juggernaut, to convince a plurally superior racial vote base that it is the economy’s messiah and that it and it alone stands as a bulwark between the country and economic relapse, notwithstanding the fact that it has managed to spectacularly mismanage the sugar industry, and bungle giant infrastructure works such as the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project access road and the fibre optic cable, just to name some choice examples.
As flogging is now deemed cruel and unusual punishment, the sole remaining disciplinary mechanism to deal with recalcitrant politicians who pursue ill-fated and self-serving policies, and, conversely, to reward sensible politicians who pursue initiatives beneficial to the country is the ballot box, where the electorate has the power to routinely vote in or out politicians based on their job performance. By allowing the PPP to ruthlessly prey on our ethnic insecurities, we, Guyanese of East Indian origin, have en bloc conceded our power over this mechanism to a cabal of politicians – and, if this sad trend continues, their progeny – who have their cosmetic desires and not our needs and those of all of our countrymen at heart.
For 23 years, the PPP has waved, from its campaign podiums, the jumbie of a return to PNC orchestrated tyranny when an actual aberration is upon us, draining the lifeblood out of the economy and presiding over a youth jobs crisis so great that we effectively export 90% of our tertiary graduates and, according to recently disclosed US Embassy statistics and other analytical extrapolations, a handsome chunk of our overall labour force; subjecting independent media to sustained and systematic harassment; and perpetrating routine and widespread human rights abuses against youngsters and dissidents.
Unlike the 1980s, when Cold War fever was at its pitch and the West, however rightly or wrongly, was dead set against any communist orientated entities, including Dr Jagan’s PPP, the international community, particularly the ever influential ABC countries, will not this time support and condone any violation, whether by a coalition- or PPP-led Government of Guyana of the 21st century values system of governance. Rigged elections and military subversion of democracy have not recurred not just because the PPP has forsworn this, but because in an interdependent global system, a tiny country in the West’s backyard cannot get away with it. Further, the PNC-led APNU coalition has, in effect, tied its hands, by guaranteeing its Alliance for Change partner 12 seats in the National Assembly which amounts to, effectively, as some observers have noted, a veto on a David Granger led government. It’s unimaginable that the PPP of today would be so magnanimous.
While I may not be so old as to be waxing paternalistically, I feel alarmed that my neighbourhood cherubs will continue to be raised in a country where their hardworking parents struggle to put a decent roof over their heads and meals on the table. I am alarmed that my little cousins will have to resort to the commonplace sycophancy to secure employment when they’ve finished college here. For as long as one group of people continue to govern indefinitely, not meritocracy but allying with the government constitutes the rungs on the ladder of opportunity.
Voters must not use the ineptitude and reticence of the PNC in addressing its unsavoury record, and the concomitant cotton-throated attempts to convince voters that it won’t repeat its mistakes as an excuse for allowing the PPP an endless ride of the Guyana taxpayer-funded gravy train. As the Civil Rights and gay rights movements in the US have shown, politicians are rarely wont to take the lead on pushing for any major change. It takes the grassroots, the ordinary voters, to incentivize politicians to do the right thing. While one should always be sceptical of any politician, change for change’s sake has become a good enough reason to vote for a change of government in a country where a party has become so comfortable on its perch that it feels itself immune from any consequence for its misadventures at the public’s expense.
Yours faithfully,
Saieed I Khalil