Dear Editor,
National reconciliation cannot be easily expected when those in power have their jackboots on the heads of Dr Walter Rodney’s oppressed yearning to breathe free.
Editor, my letter is in response to Dr David Hinds’ letter on January 4, 2017.
Dr Hinds’ letter defines “wrong and strong as what you have must be shared with him and if you refuse to share then you are wrong and strong.” Never mind that national patrimony is not plural entitlement in cases yet undefined or otherwise. If it were so, then the Presidency, which is a national patrimony, ought to be perpetually shared because it is Guyanese. Is my daughter not Guyanese? Share her with whom?
Dr Hinds’ kith and kin are not likely to explain why they always demand shared Government when they are not in power, but once they occupy that same seat you never hear about shared Governance. Why no offering to share power either by Federalism or joint Presidency or whatever? What prevents the PNC-led coalition to set up their own research library for their Presidents of yesteryear? Why this entitlement to piggyback on others?
Any expectations for national reconciliation with whom is Dr Hinds talking about, needs to be defined. He actually means between the WPA and the PPP. Dr Hinds does not speak for the APNU/AFC coalition and had admitted so. The WPA in fact, has no power in the Coalition and we all know it. Come 2020 when the next election comes around, the WPA and all smaller parties are “dead meat”. The WPA would be unalterably and completely irrelevant. They have never held a party congress since Dr Rodney died. Now this talk about national reconciliation is spat into the air and falls to earth one knows not where. How can national reconciliation ever be tenable when 1700 sugar workers are fired unilaterally by GuySuCo’s head Dr Clive Thomas, who is also a member of the WPA? Is it just because he has the power to dismantle the livelihood of hundreds of Guyanese? Let’s do national reconciliation first with our farmers and working class and reconciliation could be considered. Talk that Skeldon Sugar factory is to be sold makes no sense when the GuySuCo people have not proffered the same option for Wales and LBI. Why not? Dr Thomas is no business genius to even make a profit selling either conkey or fried plantain on the street corner. Yet like the PNC which destroyed the railway system in Guyana they are now dismantling the sugar industry with its overwhelming Indian workforce. Same mistake, same party, same thing all over again. Isn’t this revenge for not getting the Prime Ministerial post when it was offered to Dr Thomas and he declined? Sour grapes syndrome is ruling our dear land of Guyana.
“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.” (Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar)
That we are underlings is because the PPP/C government screwed up the sugar industry for support to Linden and now we pay the price of our partisan negligence. Who is to be blamed? “The fault, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (Also Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar).
Guyana is 83,000 square miles and Buxton has lots of land aback which it can donate. What’s the fuss with Red House to house infidel propaganda? Dr Hinds calls it “wrong and strong”. He means “what you have belong to me and what I do or do not have also belongs to me because I am entitled to it… forever.” No can do sir.
National reconciliation can be expected when those in power have removed their jackboot on those who are being subjugated to be their new indentured servants.
Sincerely,
Sultan Mohamed