Dear Editor,
SN of April 13 carried two letters: ‘Is the Coalition planning to win on the ignorance of our youths?’ by Ryhaan Shah, and ‘It takes ordinary voters to incentivize politicians to do the right thing’ Saieed I Khalil, which attracted my attention.
Ms Shah’s letter raises several issues but the most compelling appear to be:
- a) Why does the coalition not want young people to know about the past? Are they ashamed, guilty, or afraid of being unmasked?
- b) If youthful ignorance is being praised by the coalition one wonders what kind of education our children will receive should they win?
Ms Shah does not need any unmasking; as a member of the top brass in the Guyana Indian Heritage Association (GIHA) her agenda is very ethnocentric and politically slanted, so her key questions contain her agenda.
Juxtaposed with her missive is that of a 21-year-old, Saieed I Khalil, who writes, “I consider myself quite knowledgeable 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.” Wow!
Mr Saieed will be voting for the first time on May 11, and if he is the same person, is a young man I only met once some 10 years ago, introduced to me at Customs House, Georgetown, by his late father, a then diehard PPP supporter. Saieed had either topped or finished in the top three at the Common Entrance examination, and his late father was very proud of him.
Following up in 2010 he was the top CSEC student obtaining 15 Grade Ones and 1 Grade Two. He met the then President Bharrat Jagdeo, and told GINA that he was thrilled to meet the President as “he was an inspirational figure.” (Chronicle Nov 12, 2010)
So why this child, now young man, was so moved not to follow the ‘inspirational figure’ and his party, and now publicly embraces the coalition?
The answer is education!
He has researched, read and interpreted for himself the history of Guyana, and in the process rejected the bottom-house indoctrination and exhortations of the Ryhaan Shahs of this world and formed his own opinion. His history is not a blinkered history or a history to forget, but grounded in current realities, including the rejection of nepotism, cronyism, and ethnocentric indoctrination.
He does not accept as an educated young Guyanese that all the blame should be on Burnham’s shoulders. Not that Burnham was blameless, but blame should be on a system that encouraged authoritarian behaviour.
He asks the question about ‘critical support’, something that Ms Shah needs to address before lecturing to all of us. If Burnham and the PNC were so horrible, then why did the PPP give critical support? Why did they want to form a national front government with the big bad wolf? The PNC leadership has singularly failed to frontally answer and provide answers on the policies of the late 1970s to 1985, and in the process has allowed the demonizing of Burnham. It is now refreshing to see a young brilliant Guyanese doing the research and articulating a different interpretation of our history so that we can move on as a nation.
I encourage young Mr Khalil to research Desmond Hoyte aka Desmond Persaud’s role post-1985 on Guyana’s economic development. How he parted ways with Burnham and Jagan’s economic philosophy and laid the foundation for our current economic growth.
I agree with Ms Shah that history matters. The study of past events and the behaviour of mankind is important to guide us in our future. But to be held to ransom by our history, to be enslaved by it will forever doom us and prevent progress. Some of the most enlightened leaders – Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela – have shown that they were not enslaved by their historical experiences. Why should we be?
In closing I wish to ask Ms Shah, if it is not too much, to provide her answer on why the 9 children and 2 wives of the PPP top brass, are now on their candidates’ list. Should we not critically examine this as part of our history lesson?
The two questions she raised have been eloquently answered by Mr Khalil. He should keep it up!
Yours faithfully,
Jerome Khan