Dear Editor,
I refer to the article titled, “IRI-led electoral reform should be suspended; CARICOM should get the job -GHRA” (KN May 14). I agree. First, Guyanese electoral reform will not occur without political compromise, as the GHRA noted. Notwithstanding that, I still believe that both major political groups will search diligently for ways to insert and deploy “ethnic manipulation” in whatever reforms/processes are finalized. Ethnic manipulation stands as the passport to power; it is irresistible, and I am sure that, even with the most robust reforms, there will be gaming the system, playing upon words, and making skilled mockeries of what is memorialized. Second, this society does not, should not, have use for a Republican-centric entity that provides guidance on what electoral reform should be in this nation of diverse peoples. To this day, Republican leadership, at most levels, and with few exceptions, still live with the loss of the White House since last November (make that January 2021), and harbor pretenses of cheating and other such intellectual divisiveness and mental perversities. These are not the kind of men that we should want here and welcome here to help us with much-needed electoral reforms. They are also, like Guyanese partisans, all about cult leadership, and the party first, and whatever the cost. How can these people assist us with genuine electoral reform, when they lack the basic honesty and decency to fix themselves first?
As parallel and precedent, I remind Guyanese of something, possibly unfamiliar to them. When the Americans, through the swashbuckling Reagan-Bush eras, extended a helping hand in the Caspian Sea region, an entity named U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce came into being. Its so-called Council of Advisers were known heavyweights from those two presidencies: James Baker III, Henry Kissinger, John Sununu, and Brent Scowcroft. I make no comparison to the equivalent we have today called Am-Cham Guyana, but I do point to the Republican powerhouses in the IRI, such as Lindsay Graham and Marco Rubio. Would you trust men like these to be near, or somehow involved with, electoral reform in Guyana? I wouldn’t. To take this deeper, there is big billion-dollar business opportunities in Guyana, so it is imperative for some semblance of this electoral reform bandied about to meet Guyana’s urgent needs. After all, political stability is good for business profits with Guyanese. Get CARICOM. Let’s fix this ourselves, with black minds and brown ones, and all the others, earnestly contributing.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
