Dear Editor,
Ms. Rhyaan Shah is at it again, shifting the goal post and distorting Guyanese history to suit her flawed arguments. In Stabroek News and Kaieteur News of 20.4.2015, she states “our political history did not start in 1992, with the PPP coming to office and as much as the coalition is taking the PPP to task on its record of corruption and cronyism, the PNC, now APNU, must expect its own records to be similarly examined.”
I have no disagreement with Ms. Shah asking for the PNC to answer the questions asked and I am on record as stating that the failure of the PNC leadership to do so and to apologize where appropriate will haunt them forever. Her question specifically to the AFC and the Coalition in general, has been answered and is grounded in a call for Guyana to move on, adopting the Nelson Mandela approach in the Republic of South Africa.
I also agree with Ms. Shah that no one can simply wish away the past; but which past are we speaking of; the past that is peddled by Ms. Shah or the past that includes all that happened in Guyana including the last 23 years. In these last 23 years, where ‘free press operates’, thanks to Hugh Desmond Hoyte who radically departed from Marxist/Leninist/Socialist doctrinaire which included controlling all news media -, where two media houses are targeted weekly by the ruling party, including withdrawal of Government advertisements, Ms. Shah remains deaf and dumb.
Ms. Shah’s selective recitation of history brings her credentials into question as she speaks about the horrible killing of Father Darke at the hands of thugs, but forgets the slaughter of Minister Satyadeow Shaw and his siblings in LBI. Ms. Shah cunningly forgets to mention the machine gun murder of my neighbour political activist Ronald Waddell and most recently, Courtney Crum-Ewing, whose only sin was using a loud speaker to promote the coalition’s interest.
So when this lady speaks of party paramountcy, institutional racism and organised thuggery under the PNC and not the current clique, she should be held accountable.
Those who were judges of the Guyana Prize for Literature, something started under President Desmond Hoyte, have to be cringing that one of their winners has broken all the sacrosanct rules, that good writers must first research before writing. Ms. Shah carelessly quoted the Kennedys, Bushes and Clintons to justify the ‘pickney’ politics of the PPP slate and when exposed makes the quantum leap that ‘our electoral process is different but is every bit as democratic as the US’s’. Is this the kind of reasoning and writing that Ms Shah produced to be a winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature?
My exchange with Ms Shah is closed even if she churns out more bile, but I wish to say that I would happily wear her label of that of a ‘purple prose writer’, instead of her gown of a contortionist and historical distortionist.
Yours faithfully,
Jerome Khan
