Dear Editor,
I would like to issue a call to all my fellow Guyanese to rethink the situation on the national level in which we find ourselves from a fresh perspective, and make an effort to resolve once and for all the relationships we share so that we can really join together and contribute to the mutual development of our people.
This would entail each of us, of whatever political persuasion, community or grouping we identify with, putting aside our several interests and differences and striving to find a way by which we could cooperatively make the greatest contribution to our national progress.
We all know that our most unsurmountable obstacles relate to whatever political and ethnic group we belong to, and so this must lead us to realise that these are the areas in which we must make the greatest efforts to achieve national cohesion. It is clear that our politicians have been the greatest villains in both of these areas, as we carry on the policy of divide and rule that we have inherited from our colonial past, from the winner take all that has been the code of our own political culture since our Independence, and the ‘we and them’ tradition that they have encouraged among our two main races which has permeated all other areas of our lives.
I have always decried the tradition of our political interaction in Parliament which I feel has been directed by the term identifying the members of parliament on the losing side as the ‘opposition’, which has been responsible for those members believing that they are doing their duty when they simply oppose.
It would be such a boon to our progress if all our elected representatives should cooperate and work constructively on the various projects towards fulfilling the responsibilities that have been entrusted to them by our people. I would now appeal to the present opposition to bite the bullet and make an unprecedented effort to change this parliamentary culture by doing their part in bringing into reality the cooperative nature of our Republic, which I am sure will earn them kudos from all Guyanese.
I also issue an appeal to all Guyanese to always bear in mind that colour is skin-deep, and we should strive assiduously to remove the scourge of racial prejudice, which is the greatest hindrance to our national aspirations. If I should venture the solution to this problem, I would like us all to consider that the only permanent answer is that we should earnestly strive to spread love among our people. All other attempts at unity are only perfunctory and temporary and will fizzle out eventually.
Yours faithfully,
Roy Paul
