Dear Editor,
With the Granger administration in its early stages, Guyana seems to finally have hope for some genuine change. Still, we have a far way to go towards developing a culture of holding public officials accountable and this has the potential to negate many of the potential gains of this new regime, as has happened under previous ones.
I realise that one of the things that we have to be committed to going forward is education on the role of the citizen within a democracy, particularly the right of reasonable dissent. As I took pains to explain on a programme the night before elections, governance has to be informed by continuous participation by citizens using their voices to express both agreement and disagreement with their government.
Political leadership and public service are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is held in the hands of every citizen. We need to end the idiocy of abdicating our rights and duties as citizens to some pseudo-monarchical sense of government. I can be both one of the leading champions of the Granger administration and one of its sharpest critics, just as I can love my son and discipline him when he errs − there is no conflict in that position.
Yours faithfully,
Ruel Johnson
