Dear Editor,
Not unexpectedly, Dr. H. Jeffrey has responded to my letter published in the SN and Chronicle Newspapers in relation to his “Alliance” theory in his SN column of the 15th April, intituled “Alliance did not bring down the PPP”. The goodly academic/politician must be commended indeed for his felicitous response of the 22nd inst. This kind of discourse ought to be encouraged but not wholly emulated. En passant, I will contend that the conclusions drawn in his latest analysis do not appear to have considered the peculiar avant-garde, substantive and nuanced architectural configuration of our Constitution.
With the burdens of my fulltime occupation, I elect, on occasions, to join a national conversation of substance in an effort to present some personal perspective if my country’s history and political evolution are not to be imperceptibly revised. It is for this reason, among others, that I shared the excerpts from the two historical Texts written by non- Guyanese, with the hope that the racial and ethnic prejudices normally associated with the spectre of mistrust of anything authored by Indo- and/or Afro-Guyanese, if indeed, these are not misnomers, would not diminish their impact.
Not given to clairvoyance or having the blessing of prescience, or for that matter, the luxury of, if not lucrative, a Column in the SN, I am the first to admit that I was not persuaded, at the time, about Henry’s “more or less chronological analysis of modem coalition government which only today arrived at 1964”. In that context, I sought to give the reading public when it was fresh in their minds, a timeous perspective, according to the historical record, having been steeped in the political subterfuges of the 1960s, thanks to my father’s close ties to the then Kabaka, as I presume, Henry was in the late 70’s and 80’s. Under our 1980 Constitution, coalitions, post-Elections, are no more than shared governance in disguise and have been the dubious ambition of many a vanquished candidate seeking political longevity. Let me hasten to add that it is not within my remit to indulge in “the PPP’s story” which according to him, “seeks to politically denigrate all those who stood against it (and) is in need of revision”. Only a fool leaps in where the wise hesitate to tread! In my fifth decade of the vocation to which I am wedded, I have leamt to be judgmental only when so appointed.
However, if a comparison of the records of the two main juggemauths in the upcoming Elections is to be essayed, in the language of the Law: Res ipsa loquitur – the record speaks for itself.
Yours faithfully,
Justice Charles. R. Ramson S.C. O.R
(Retired Attorney-General and
Minister of Legal Affairs.)
