Dear Editor,
“Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall” – Proverbs 16:18
I sat as a Member of the National Assembly and I listened to the boastful statements – “Bring it On”, “Jagdeo’s Motion is of nuisance value”, “God is fighting for us” and “Pharoah you are rejected” – all utterances from the Government benches during the December 21, 2018 debate on the No Confidence Motion. The results were clear. The motion was validly carried.
I participated as a member of the delegation of the Leader of the Opposition that subsequently met with President David Granger in January 2019. Again, I saw a display of pride and arrogance, an unwillingness to humble one’s self, refusal to accept the results of the NCM of December 2018 and comply with the provisions of Articles 106(6 and 7) of the Constitution of Guyana, the Supreme Law of the Land.
As a citizen, I read in the print media, listened to the electronic media, and followed carefully on social media, comments emanating from then who ought to by now be former senior government functionaries, acting in a manner of being indispensible, irreplaceable and exuding a tone that suggested that they had a divine right to perpetually rule Guyana.
In that mix of commentary was the loud and brazen damnation of all those who dared to oppose President Granger and his cabal, labeling such persons as evil and even likened them to the Anti-Christ. The daily quotations of “no weapons formed against us shall be able to prosper”, splurged many quotes in all media forms. Incidentally, there was no rebuke or call for sobriety from “Good Men”. The world is not the way it is because of bad people, but because of the inaction and silence of “Good Men”.
The day when the matters were ruled upon by our learned Chief Justice, this brigade with a ‘holier than thou’ attitude castigated and made all kinds of spurious allegations in an attempt to traduce her integrity. This trend of falsely projecting an aura of themselves as good and can do no wrong, and others as evil and unworthy, was indeed a travesty and troubled developments that went unchecked. I wandered for Guyana during that period. Prideful politicians think they can get away with anything. When their policies fail and their misdeeds become public, they shift the blame or deny wrong doings and train wrecks. I cringe at this type of behavior and blind acceptance.
The Guyana Court of Appeal’s majority decision that upheld all of the Chief Justice’s rulings save and except for what can be considered a majority of 65 in the National Assembly, was viewed by some as the Urban-middle-class ensuring their champion remains relevant. In my Budget Debate speech in 2015, I had described the APNU/AFC Coalition as an urban middle-class judo-Christian elite that has a façade of pseudo-spiritualism. Every wrongdoing that was highlighted by the opposition was excused, explained away and in some cases referred to as mere political propaganda. Even when hard-evidence was presented as in the cases of the drug bond scandal, Durban Park fiasco and US$18M signing bonus that was hidden from the knowledge of the Guyanese people and not even mentioned until almost two years later.
Editor, I agonized having listened to our president denying he has done anything wrong even in the face of the decisions from the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), which stated that the unilateral appointment of the GECOM chairman by the President was unconstitutional and flawed. This ‘man of pride’ has been elevated now to the ‘prince of pride’ by his open unwillingness to even acknowledge that he is wrong by continuing to behave as if there was not a definitive ruling on this matter. Is this a declaration of infallibility? As a country we must first acknowledge wrongdoing. President Granger must be seen for who he truly is. His pride is obnoxious. He may be a good man, may I say, but certainly, a weak and reckless President. Truth needs no crutches. If it does, it’s a lie.
I call upon all of Guyana to be enlightened and awakened to the reality that when one thinks that he can do no wrong, more wrongs will be done. It will be done to you, your children, and your children’s children. This authoritarian, totalitarian and velvet dictatorship must be halted and a way to do this is through the democratic process of free and fair elections.
Mr Granger, you have been weighed in the balances and you have been found wanting. You have exhausted our Constitutional Courts, but now you are being judged at the mercies of the Court of Public Opinion.
Yours sincerely,
Bishop Juan A. Edghill
PPP/C MP
