Dear Editor,
I have followed Mr Sase Singh’s contributions to the present debate which focused on my contention that Dr Jagan and the PPP had withdrawn the ministerial offer made to Dr Clive Thomas after the 1992 regional and general elections. I had deliberately refrained from engaging him since his interventions were not substantially different from those persons whom I was responding to in the debate. However, after having read his letter that was published in Stabroek News on Friday, July 15 captioned ‘Jagan would have formed the government in 1992 without help from the WPA once TUF support was in place’, I now feel obliged to pen this letter.
I will restrict this response to two points. The first is related to Mr Singh’s position that Jagan could have formed the government with TUF support. This is a non-issue in this debate, since neither I nor Mr Ali Majeed, to whom Mr Singh is directly responding, ever claimed that the PPP/C and Dr Jagan needed the WPA’s support to form the government. I wish to add that Jagan did not need the support of either the TUF or the WPA to do so. My point in this polemic was and is that the WPA’s support in parliament provided Jagan with the parliamentary comfort to pass the budget without having to negotiate an agreement with the PNC to do so. In previous letters I had made the observation that contributors to the debate, and this included Mr Singh, were debating with themselves, rather than addressing the issues raised by me.
They spent valuable time dealing with matters they wanted to expound on at a time when those issues had no relevance to the debate.
I wish in making my second point to salute Mr Singh for the maturity he demonstrated in accepting responsibility for his misplaced utterances in his letter in SN captioned ‘Information was extracted from the Carter Center’. His willingness to publicly engage in “self-criticism” is a good example of how to conduct responsible public polemics, a rare quality in Guyana. His outright apology to Brother Ali Majeed and the WPA leadership is a breath of fresh air in our toxic political culture. As a member of WPA’s leadership, I use this opportunity to say to Mr Singh, we humbly accept your apology.
Yours faithfully,
Tacuma Ogunseye
