Dear Editor,
Politics is a form of 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 utilise 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.
The Administration’s recent attempt to carry through with recovering our taxes and charging People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government officials hit a snag as the PPP has rightly and thankfully brought to the fore the People’s National Congress’ (PNC) own involvement in corruption and waylaying State property, with no better examples than Carl Greenidge himself being the recipient of property transfers during the PNC years at below market value prices, and the PNC benefiting from the transfer of State lands to itself at zero cost (Guyana Times; Apr 22). This while Guyanese today have to find as much as GY$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 transgression of the PNC during its earlier dictatorship.
This recent attempt at snagging some PPP officials who were 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 from 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 policymakers, 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.
Yours faithfully,
Craig Sylvester
