Dear Editor,
The PPP and PNC (now APNU) have always had axes to grind, and their differences have escalated over the years into rowdy range yard feuds. These differences are all about who did what to who.
We have seen these feuds grow and spawn a life of their own from around the latter half of the 20th Century to now in the 23rd year of the 21st. Century.
Guyanese are fed up with all the hyperbole and want to move on. Many of today’s generation simply do not care about that stuff.
Last Saturday, 9-9-23, I read a letter penned by Dr Randolph Persaud about “Race” being the new master trope of the APNU. It was all about the PNC rigging elections and who got flour, who got onions and who got none.
Editor, keeping these party feuds alive does not only open old wounds among the older generation, but it does nothing to help create the “One Guyana” atmosphere the President is pushing.
This kind of rhetoric does far worse than good.
Guyana with its current oil wealth is not performing as well as our government would like us to believe. People of all ethnic groups in our country are experiencing hardship. Their incomes are barely sufficient to see them through. The country is experiencing poor performance among the police and other state entities which is not commensurate with this new wealth. Our levels of hardship are experienced differently but are equally felt.
The government appears to know it all and appears above the people on the issues that matter most. Criticism is often taken personally (Who’s side you’re on?)
The PNC sponsored Constitution has been largely left in place and benefits the current government who has long promised to change it.
Why then must I be reminded of rigged elections and not the atrocities of the past PPP government? If we want to create “One Guyana” we must address these issues or just bury them, and not keep singling them out for special attention. So, the PNC did what it thought it had to do, to survive then, and so did the PPP, it is all politics. We must get over those dark periods of both parties and get on with building our nation together. Supporters of both sides will only mouth what their leaders put in their heads.
Both the APNU and the PPP have been dwelling on each other’s past in their attempts to remain relevant but then drop their masks when elected to office.
Guyana cannot develop cohesively and certainly not as ‘One Guyana” by one ethnic group alone. Oil will come and go, and we will remain a divided nation if we continue along this path.
Sincerely,
B.A Ramsay