We cannot, with our present knowledge, sit by and wait on our doom.

May 17, 2018 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Politics is a form civil war. It is the civil war concerned with the acquisition and control of power or authority over a nation or group of individuals. Political parties engage themselves in civil war for the seat of government. It is a battle of ideas between the contesting parties. In a fair fight, the party which has the best ideas, has failed the least, and promises and delivers the most, is usually victorious. Guyana is engaged in a civil war, and the major contestants have failed Guyanese miserably.
It seems that not a day goes by without the coalition administration reminding Guyanese that we made a grave error at the 2015 elections. All of this is however necessary for us to mature intellectually as a nation, to accept the incurable faults of our previous administrations.
The coalition administration committed to returning to Burnham’s ideas almost immediately upon entering into office, an unthinkable proposition before the elections. Why? Most probably because these ideas utilize oppression as a means of remaining in power. It also rejected the notion that it is responsible for creating employment and urged Guyanese to become entrepreneurs.
Dialogue with the private sector on our economic development has been brought to a political standstill, with the chairman of the Private Sector Commission only trying to make a show of engagement to allow its members who are betting on acquiring sugar estate lands to get better terms. Its intention to gouge Guyanese’ pockets with taxes and higher fees have almost become draconian.
The administration’s recent attempt to carry through with recovering our taxes and charging PPP government officials hit a snag, as the PPP has rightly and thankfully brought to the fore the PNC’s own involvement in corruption and waylaying state property – this, while Guyanese today have to find as much as $1.2 million to pay for a house-lot just more than one tenth of an acre. But these are very surely just some of the more flagrant transgressions of the PNC during its earlier dictatorship.
This recent attempt at snagging some PPP officials who were allegedly involved in waylaying billions of dollars in our taxes was an attempt to overcome the negative publicity the administration was receiving from its childish copying of the oil contract used by the PPP as a blueprint for its recent agreement with Exxon, and the slew of criticism it was receiving for mishandling the dismissal of sugar workers, in addition to the declining economic activity and the general disgruntled position of Guyanese with government.
To crown all of this off, the administration is set on pursuing efforts to include criticisms of its administration via certain media as sedition, a hilarious and notoriously heretic position in this current enlightened state of our democracy. If anything, this points to the absolute shallowness of the administration’s politicians and policy makers, since this is a confession if any that they are unable or unwilling to correct their policy mistakes, and are instead intent on laying the foundations for dictatorship and government bullying, as the economy seems to continue to collapse under their recalcitrant backwardness.
The administration’s recent purchase of what I can only describe as some 30-year old hens for the Army is an obvious attempt to curry favour with the Army, and is the height of eye-pass. The heads of the Army need to pay close attention to our national politics and understand what is unfolding. Their first responsibility is not to any political party or government in power, but to securing and defending Guyanese, even from their governments.
Guyanese love sports. One of the things they are keen to pick up on is losers. Governments which have to rig elections are losers. The PNC’s history is replete with economic mismanagement and elections-rigging. It seems set in its old ways. The question that arises as we approach 2020 from over the horizon is: can we expect the coalition to play fair?
Also, do Guyanese want the PPP back in office in 2020? The only thing worse than the PPP and its corruption, money-laundering and disregard for workers’ welfare is the economic mismanagement and elections-rigging that is almost sure to unfold under this administration going into 2020 and after. And that’s a start.
One of the things we can ill-afford to do is have the present knowledge at our disposal, wait for the election results, and then try to do something about it.
Yours Faithfully,
Craig Sylvester

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