Dear Editor,
I am ready to argue that: NICIL was not lawless, and was good for Guyana; that the only fiasco about Amaila was the then Opposition withdrawing its support and scuttling the development of a waterfall which had been identified in an internationally-supported programme of the mid-1970s as one of the best to match our domestic needs; and that the major embarrassment in Guyana must be the inability of this Coalition Government to find anything substantial to support its allegations of corruption of hundreds of billions of dollars in annual budget expenditures whilst the PPP/C was in office.
In the unwarranted and unjustified attack on former President Janet Jagan, that letter writer displayed his alarming prejudice and beliefs generated by the hostile propaganda of the 1950s and 1960s. Though Mrs Jagan was not born a Guyanese, she was a Guyanese of greater faith than many born here. It was Former President Janet Jagan — with her understanding of how badly many Afro-Guyanese felt about losing elections one after another to the PPP — who, after our 1997 elections, despite the sense of unhappiness throughout her party about accepting another injustice, signed that Herdmanston Accord which provided for constitutional amendments to put limitations on the powers of the President and the Executive, and brought forward our next elections by two years.
Former President Janet Jagan signed the Agreement, and it was former President Bharrat Jagdeo who assented to the ensuing amendments. However, as he once quipped, one amendment he wouldn’t assent to would be an amendment that said the PPP shouldn’t win an election!
The letter writer must have been carried away with his jaundiced views in bringing up the name of Roger Khan. An unprejudiced review of our media from the months preceding our 1997 elections unto today would reveal that a criminal fringe of mainly Afro-Guyanese men took over Buxton, and, styling themselves as ‘Freedom Fighters’, launched attacks on mainly Indo-Guyanese, at the same time ‘disciplining’ Blacks who did not meet their pleasure. With our security forces being remarkably unsuccessful in apprehending them, Roger Khan — a man with contacts in almost all circles in Guyana — took on himself and some associates the task of apprehending them. It was a period when Guyanese and Guyana were put to a severe test; maybe it is still too early for a true and complete telling. Suffice it to say that it was a troubled time, a period when a President could have become very protective of himself and party.
I want to assure the writer and the public that we value excellence no less, but excellence must be judged in context. A major plank of the PPP and PPP/C is to prefer policies and programmes which would entrain and benefit the larger number, and provide for growth upwards from the widest base. We are wary of trickle-down approaches.
The CCJ would rule on a former two-term President running again for office; if allowed, the Guyanese electorate will have its say. Whatever the case, we are free to reconsider whatever we intended. There are many countries which allow former Presidents to run again after an absence of one or two terms. Former President Jagdeo would now be eligible to be President again in perhaps every country of the world save for the USA, and what appears to be the evolving practice in China.
Yours truly,
Samuel A A Hinds
Former Prime Minister
and former President
