Dear Editor,
It must have been serendipity that I read in the Sunday Stabroek yesterday two letters by two contributors to your paper. One entitled `Why I’m voting for David Granger’ and `Why I cannot support David Granger’.
This forced me for the first time in many years to wade through the still morass of words put together by one GHK Lall. As compensation for this singular feat, I was treated to the intellectually stimulating missive written by Christopher Ram.
This letter is not meant to be a celebration of Ram’s erudite contribution, however tempting that is. I cannot, however, avoid an assessment of Lall’s paltry offering. As incredible as it may seem, Lall sees no reason to get to the point until near the end of two pages of words. As he has so inelegantly stated, he supports Mr. Granger whom he offers to us as a paragon of virtue and abhors the ‘Other Side’ whom he labels as craven opportunists.
The irony of this is that Lall, who has been the epitome of opportunistic behaviour, should seek to cast this moniker upon a party whose members dragged this country up from the depths of bankruptcy and suffering. Whose members dedicated their entire lives to the service of this Guyana, often at great personal sacrifice. Who negotiated the cancellation of debts incurred by the wasteful, profligate government of the eighties.
Mr. Ram’s pellucid points succinctly resonated with me since most of the factors he listed were the catalysts that drove me into active political life and into the welcoming arms of the PPP/Civic.
The plight of the sugar workers first stirred me out of a neutral complacency. In December of 2017, I had reason to address a massive contingent of former sugar workers at Skeldon. The despair on those faces almost shocked me into silence and I felt keenly the inadequacy of what I was trying to do. The compassionate members of the Private Sector Commission had all dug deep into their pockets to ensure that the workers, who had all been laid off without a penny shortly before Christmas, would at least have a meal on that holy day and their children would have a new toy. What precisely was I trying to do, I wondered? What would they eat on the day after Christmas?
I realized then that an uncaring government who would do this to thousands of hardworking men and women and their innocent children was not one that I could, or would, support.
It took more than a year for me to make up my mind to make that difficult decision, but I joined the Civic in April of 2019. That decision, which is irreversible, was helped along by the utter arrogance of Mr. Granger’s assumption of the authority to interpret the sacrosanct Constitution of this country and his flagrant contempt for the mandatory provisions of said Constitution.
If elections had been held within the three months given, the APNU had a fair chance of winning. That chance has dissipated in the myriad lies and utter contempt they have since shown. Take a seat, Mr Granger.
Yours faithfully,
Faye Elizabeth Alleyne
