Dear Editor,
I read with dismay and complete disbelief a media report from the online Guyana Newsroom, in which the PPP Presidential candidate Irfaan Ali announced (from PPP headquarters) a supposedly national committee to address the COVID-19 pandemic in Guyana. According to the report, the committee “will bring together human, financial and material resources to tackle the virus, which has wrecked several developed countries, head-on.”
I am stunned beyond belief that in Guyana, a country that has one of the weakest healthcare systems in the world, the response to a virus (that the presidential candidate himself recognises as having a devastating effect on developed countries), is to create a parallel taskforce. So now we have two taskforces, competing for messaging, competing for resources (local and international), competing for Guyanese people’s attention. Two taskforces split down partisan lines. We are playing Russian roulette with people’s lives.
Can we stop and ask ourselves what kind of rabbit hole we have gone down in the current political impasse, where we believe that this is how we approach a pandemic? That in Guyana this is what “all hands on deck” has come to mean? We will lose people, we have already started to lose Guyanese lives, and if our politicians cannot find a way to work together in the national interest they will all have Guyanese lives on their hands. This is so so much bigger than any of us and divided right now we do not stand a chance.
If this story is correct, Guyana will now have the distinction of being the ONLY country in the world where we think that having two taskforces, along partisan lines, will solve what is staring us in the face. We are staring down the barrel of a gun and this is what we come up with.
We need national leadership. Not this awfulness. And for the record, insisting on a transparent recount of Guyanese votes in the March 2 elections and holding fast to that non-negotiable commitment and truth, does NOT and can NOT and should NOT stand in the way of a national response to a devastating pandemic the likes of which most of us have not seen in our lifetime. In fact it can only strengthen our claims on what is just. Guyanese lives are on the line. To those in government and those in the opposition who are putting Guyanese lives at risk (whether you are in government and say you have invited the opposition to join the taskforce but there is no sense that this is broad and meaningful, or whether the main opposition is now in response starting its own so called national taskforce), grow the hell up. You are literally challenged to show Guyanese that their lives matter now.
Yours faithfully,
Alissa Trotz
