Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 31, 2017 Letters
Dear Editor,
We refer to the letter by Mr. Hyder Ally published in the Stabroek News of 25 January 2017. In that letter he appeared to reaffirm the Marist-Leninist ideology of the PPP, by invoking President Cheddi Jagan’s idea that this ideology guides the PPP in respect to elevation of the poor, democracy and a humane society.
We can go straight to the evidence Mr. Ally. Name the poor who acquired shares from privatisation of assets, which were recently part of 80 percent of Guyana’s state owned economy. What actually happened was that assets, owned by the poor and controlled by the state, were given to the rich. We can name the new owners and beneficiaries of the privatised assets, but we cannot identify the poor. Further, Guyana’s poor are represented in Parliament. Did the PPP respect their representative’s right to decide how privatisation would be accomplished?
Name Guyana’s poor who benefited from the Radio and TV licenses that were shared out by President Jagdeo, just before he demitted office. Or was this a sinister scheme by the PPP’s brass to dominate dissemination of propaganda and thereby suppress freedom of expression by the poor? Name the Guyanese poor who own shares in the Berbice River Bridge or the Marriot Hotel. Which of Guyana’s poor live in the so called “Pradoville One and Two” housing areas?
Why is it that the poor paid the ultimate price from the spate of extrajudicial killings during the reign of the PPP from 1992 to 2015? Why it is that PPP government officials were able to travel abroad, on the poor’s tax dollars, for medical treatment while the said poor die in the pathetic state owned medical facilities and services in Guyana?
Why is it that scholarships were generously given to the children of PPP Ministers and high party officials, while Guyana’s poor endured a dilapidated, poorly staffed, poorly equipped, 19th century education at the ramshackled University of Guyana, but must repay student loans for a 6th rate education from the pitiable salaries paid in this country?
Why did PPP administrations attempt to cut off the poor’s tax dollars from private media houses that criticised them, and what has the PPP done about freedom of access to information? Why was there so much complaint from the citizenry about failure of PPP administrations to adhere to the constitution and laws of the country? Why is it that for two decades the PPP denied the poor people of Guyana their democratic right to choose their leaders through local government election Mr. Ally? One must assume that the poor and powerless were responsible for these deeds, or was this fundamentally because of Communist – Socialist ideologies based on Marxism-Leninism and practiced by regimes which subscribed to these ideologies?
One is therefore never surprised that terms like “the poor” and “the will of the people”, the majority of whom comprise the poor, are used as the first and last lines of defense in support of spurious claims, regardless what the world has actually experienced; that is, the brutal, autocratic, despotic, and certainly the undemocratic practices of Marxist-Leninist regimes.
Mr. Ally’s reference to President Cheddi Jagan’s 1993 declaration is instructive. He wrote; “The People’s Progressive Party to which I belong is historically a party of the working people and the poor, guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism and with the aim of building a democratic and humane society with a multi-party parliamentary system.”
If this is the position of the PPP today then the PPP is inflexible. Unfortunately for Mr. Ally there is no evidence that Marxism-Leninism practiced in Guyana or anywhere in the world, favoured the poor or delivered a democratic and humane society. He might re-examine North Korea, or produce evidence of flourishing Marist-Leninist countries or cultures. It was greater freedoms, private enterprise, free trade etc. that delivered prosperity and a more humane China in the past 35 years, not Mao Zedong’s Marxism-Leninism.
The same is true of post-Lenin’s Russia and post-Stalin’s Russia. Note that this is the same ideology which Presidents Chavez and Maduro employed in Venezuela, Guyana’s neighbour. The result is that they have destroyed the country. People like Mr. Ally remain stubborn in the face of the evidence. Fortunately for Guyana, he and his Marxist-Leninist party are the opposition and hopefully the poor will keep them there until they depart from this failed ideology.
Ivor Carryl
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