Dear Editor,
The age-old problem of alcohol and its abuse now surrounds the University of Guyana’s 60th anniversary and its El Dorado Rum sponsor. For many people it is a dilemma of the democratic right to choose the alcoholic dictator. If we want to have prize winning rums we must encourage the rum companies and if we want world fame in domestic bliss we must discourage them? We can’t have our rum and drink it. At the wedding reception of a young aunt at our house, my father poured a shot of rum for each of his three boys. One hated the taste all his life, another died from it, and the third was only a social drinker. Whence cometh the diversity? Alcoholics Anonymous recognizes a higher power. Only a more powerful supernatural spirit can conquer the lower spirits of addiction. The more enduring dilemma is that the intellectuals of the world cannot get their minds over the naturalism of their sciences to acknowledge the God who made them.
Therefore the remedies they prescribe will be ever more burdensome human regulations. The oldest universities of the world were first theological colleges. We are blessed with a diversity of religions that so far coexist peacefully in this country; and we do not have to subscribe to the hedonistic materialism the neo-colonialists advertise to us so we can consume their manufactures. Why not use this present blessing for a Faculty of Theology at UG? Our imams, pandits and pastors will not have to go overseas for training. At our present level of ignorance I can see no problem with such a Faculty being sponsored by the sale of rum. For it is not the rum that is the problem, but the disciplining of the human will, in order to achieve better.
Sincerely,
Alfred Bhulai