Dear Editor,
One day on my way home from primary school, I stopped to look at some men working. Perhaps, it was the intensity of the workmen that caught my attention and caused me to tarry. They were focused, I realised that there was no friendly bantering at that point. The ground was dug up. Bags of cement and steel poles were everywhere. A neatly dressed man with long sleeved shirt tucked neatly in pleated trousers stood there seriously observing what was happening.
Mista, is wuh yall doing?” I asked. The neatly dressed man did not look at me. He kept looking at was happening on the work ground. I was about to leave before he decided to chase me away. He spoke without even glancing at me. He told me that in a year’s time I would see a nice big house standing there. “Dis is the foundation we setting. Dis is duh most important and serious part. Dis is how it starts. Get dis wrang and everything else wrang.” He said in a gruff tone. A year later the house was standing there. Forty years later it is still standing there at Wismar Housing Scheme. It was a simple experience coupled with a tiny bit of knowledge that I locked away in the innermost recesses of my mind never to let it go.
I speak to countless people every day and night about the PNC’s upcoming biennial congress to be held in less than two weeks. They call to ask my opinion and they come across very intense. Guyanese are serious about this particular congress. In all of my recent conversations on this issue, my memory of those workmen and the neatly dressed man and his few words to me keep flashing in my mind. It has become clear that the Guyanese people want to see a new PNC. The congress to be held in early December is the foundation being set. This is the most important and serious part. We get this wrong and everything else is wrong.
This foundation must be built on the leadership of Aubrey C Norton with a most capable chairperson, Amanza Walton-Desir. We have to get this right. This is just the first step in preparing ourselves to become stronger and ready to defeat a dictatorship and hand Guyana back to all its people. We can ill-afford to get this wrong.
Yours faithfully,
Norman Browne
Political activist
