Dear Editor,
One more day! This has been the strategy of the Granger cabal since 21st December 2018; one more day in power; one more day to file a legal challenge; one more day to spend; one more day to bankrupt us; one more day to sell state assets; one more day to plunder; one more day to frustrate the will of the people; one more day to defy all those who seek to keep the peace and restore democracy (for it has been lost). The last five hundred and sixty-eight days have been a test of patience, restraint, and decency of the Guyanese people.
“We are a peaceful people, struggling the struggle, and we don’t ask for trouble, just ask around” so goes the first stanza of Dave Martin’s patriotic song Not a Blade O’ Grass, and much of it holds since the song first hit the airwaves in the ‘70s, but, these are neither ordinary nor easy times. There is a real hunger in hundreds of communities; it is painful to watch people struggle, the struggle with very little hope of providing decent meals for their families. Those who can help do so sometimes wondering if tomorrow they would be the ones needing assistance.
The very best of Guyana has been demonstrated in the way we have been our brother’s keeper; conversely; the very worst has been shown by the callous disregard of the Granger cabal for the populace. The cabal’s energy is directed to plunder, the plight of the people be damned! The two billion dollars (and counting) COVID hotel/hospital conversion is a money pit from which funds are being siphoned while precious little is being done to alleviate national suffering. This inaction by the cabal has not gone unnoticed and pressure/anger is building to spillover point. Guyanese need to remain a ‘peaceful people’ for any devolution into violence will lose us within a forest dark, with the straightforward pathway all but lost to paraphrase Alighieri.
David Granger has enlisted a cast of shameless characters in his quest to continuously delay the transition of administration to Dr. Irfaan Ali and the PPP/C who were the clear winners of the elections of 2nd March 2020. Keith Lowenfield’s submission of Mingo’s numbers is a show of contempt for all the persons who participated in the elections; the voters, the GECOM staff at every polling station, the party poll agents, the observer missions from the OAS, Commonwealth, Carter Center, CARICOM, UK, USA, Canada, AMCHAM and the PSC. Granger then added insult to injury by engaging with CARICOM as “the most legitimate interlocutor”. Maybe Granger needs the CCJ to tell him what his own words mean.
It is an accepted truism that ‘A stitch in time saves nine’ and Guyana needs that ‘simple interrupted stitch’ in the form of personal sanctions for all of those seeking to benefit from electoral fraud. Without urgent action by international actors, this peaceful country will ‘one day’ descend further. Let us all come together and teach the Grangers of this world the meaning of the proverb Bucket go well every day, one-day di bottom ago drop out. (If you repeatedly pick the same risk, eventually it will end in disaster).
Yours faithfully,
Robin Singh
