Dear Editor,
Reading the article featuring senior Minister Joseph Harmon’s comment in the media begs the question, why is Harmon attacking the messenger and refusing to deal with the message.
The issue is extremely simple and as a trained lawyer, Harmon should be more enlightened at how to reject the issues I have highlighted. But he cannot competently reject the issues, so instead, Harmon chooses the option of attacking the messenger rather that address the message. How can a Government in a country with more than 50 per cent of its people being Amerindians and East Indians appoints one of the 17 Permanent Secretaries from that combined group?
I, therefore, continue to reject Harmon’s assertions that I am trying to create a “boogie” when the real ethnic insecurity imbalance at the top of the public service was created solely by this People’s National Congress (PNC)-led Granger Administration.
Harmon should enlighten himself of our history and properly understand the concept that Guyana was a nation that was not meant to be, being below sea-level and constituted as a mash-up of people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds in an environment deliberately cultivated for the British to rule, using the model of ethnic division. But our peoples from all six races survived, persevered and rose that Golden Arrowhead in 1966. Thus, what Harmon is doing today to the leadership of the public service is a great disservice to the ancestors of all Guyanese.
Our social strategy, especially in the public service, must reflect the net self-worth of all of our people because all of our people gave their blood for this land called Guyana. When two major segments of the population (Amerindians and East Indians) are disenfranchised (deliberately or accidentally) from Harmon’s Public Sector because they are perceived as not his supporters, then this is a problem.
Why is the Granger-led PNC Administration not leveraging the diversity out of our unique differences to create a village of unity in diversity? How are we going to motivate the majority in the nation when 16 out of the 17 Permanent Secretaries do not represent them?
Harmon is trying his best to wash away my position using the powers of his office under the false pretext that the nation will listen to him because he is a senior Minister, but he is being iniquitous and this strategy will fail.
The people have eyes and they can see, they can read and they have read my list and they are waiting for Harmon’s list. The longer Minister Harmon takes to publish his list, the greater the damage to his credibility and once that is lost, as a human being, he has a problem.
We cannot mould a nation with such a prejudiced policy as is being practiced by this Granger-led PNC Government. There needs to be more balance at the top of the public service. That is all I am saying, so I cannot understand why Harmon is taking this issue so personally. Unless there is something to be guilty about.
A nation is not moulded by speeches, symbols, and subterfuge. A nation is moulded by the systems, programmes, and mechanisms we put in place to achieve the desired outcome. Is Minister Harmon saying that the desired outcome from this Granger-led PNC Administration is ethnic domination of the leadership of the public service by his “kith and kin”?
Sincerely,
Sase Singh, MSc –
Finance, ACCA
