Dear Editor,
Congratulations are in order for President David Granger on his election as Guyana’s 8th executive President.
I also commend the President for re-instituting the granting of National Awards after the PPP’s inexplicable prolonged hiatus. I also understand the need to redress the lopsided awards, ethnically speaking, during the PPP’s tenure. In other words, I can live with a preponderance of Afro-Guyanese on the list of awardees. However, I cannot support the almost extinction of Indo-Guyanese with just a few token awards.
Further, equally inexplicable, is the bypassing of many distinguished Indo-Guyanese in favour of some of recent vintage.
How can one justify an award of the CCH to Mrs Bodden? How can she stack up against the many Indo-Guyanese who have distinguished themselves by serving the country, for decades, in the fields of law and politics (Sir Fenton Ramsahoye QC and the late Doodnauth Singh SC, former attorneys general come to mind.) For sheer tenacity as a human rights and social justice activist, Freddie Kissoon comes to mind, or the legion of Indo-Guyanese who have distinguished themselves in the fields of business and commerce, banking and insurance, accountancy and engineering, and public relations and advertising, to name just a few.
I hope that next year the list will be more representative of the population and we will have meritocracy (President Granger’s words) rather than adhocracy.
Notwithstanding the above, President Granger must be commended for reinstating these awards. I do not believe in three years President Ramotar even gave out one award.
Yours faithfully,
Sowdagar Persaud
