Trotman should apologise

Nov 20, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In his letter, “There is no false copy of the AFC list” (Kaieteur News, November 6), the AFC Executive, in response to my earlier accusation that the AFC Candidates List is padded with the names of a number of Guyanese living permanently abroad, wrote, “Harry Gill would want to have the nation believe that the AFC is somehow trying to hoodwink the Guyanese electorate in some way by having Non-Resident Guyanese (NRG) on our lists of candidates, and to make us feel ashamed in some way for presenting as Candidates, a number of upstanding Guyanese citizens, who incidentally, reside outside of Guyana. What balderdash!” But isn’t this precisely what the AFC did?
He continued, “The World Bank and other International Financial Institutions’ statistics declare that of all the nations of the world most affected by the “brain-drain,” is Guyana, where 89 percent of our skilled labour force now lives and works in a developed nation.
The converse of this is that 11-12 percent of us who are still here, are pretending to manage the country effectively, by trying to provide jobs, infrastructure, education, security, health care and other social services. Who are we fooling in our grand pretense that the nation is being well governed, by so few?”
But just like the AFC Presidential Candidate Khemraj Ramjattan, who made a huge blunder at the UG Presidential Debate, citing an old report in the days when Guyana had a railroad system, Trotman, in an effort to score political points and to make the PPP/C look bad, deliberately quoted an old outdated report from the World Bank, citing figures from the year 2000 that put Guyana’s “emigration rate” at 89 percent. Note that unlike Trotman, I’ve included the URL of this report for clarification.
But even if we’re to accept this report as accurate, Trotman is being disingenuous by claiming “89 percent of our skilled labour force now lives and works in a developed nation.”
This figure obviously represents the volume of people leaving Guyana in the year 2000. They would include families with young children and babies, the unskilled and uneducated. In any event, for Trotman to say that there is only 11-12 percent of people with brains left in Guyana, is a gross insult to all Guyanese for which he should apologize.
What the AFC Prime Ministerial Candidate is actually saying, is that the rest of our people living there are all morons. I guess he’s expecting a bunch of retards to vote for the AFC next Monday, but Guyanese are not as stupid as he would want them to believe.
In his letter, Trotman concludes, “I would expect that the question posed to the good patriots who have offered themselves up as Candidates as to whether they are willing to uproot their families, take the children out of school, move away from their friends, and return to Guyana will be answered by them in the days ahead. I already know the answer to the question.”
Again, this was exactly the point I raised in my letter, “Was the AFC list …a false copy?” (KN Nov. 5).
To illustrate just how deceiving and conniving the Alliance For Change is, and why they can’t be trusted to tell the truth; a close look at GECOM Approved Lists of Candidates (http://www.gecom.org.gy/ListOfCandidates/Approved_National_Top-Up_Lists.pdf) shows Dr. Tarron Khemraj, who lives permanently in Florida, as residing at the home of AFC Executive member, Gerhard Ramsaroop, at 133 Third Street, Alexander Village -a lie.
Dr. Rohan Somar, who also resides in the USA, gives his Guyana address to GECOM as 10 Delph Street, Campbellville, the home of AFC Presidential Candidate Khemraj Ramjattan -another lie. Sasenarine Singh who also resides overseas, gives his address as 164 Fourth Street, Alexander Village, the same as his mother’s -I guess he never left his parents home.
In his letter, Trotman wrote, “Legally, there is no bar to citizens who are working and living abroad to be elected to the National Assembly”. I agree,
but there should be laws against lying or giving false and misleading information to officials of the Guyana Elections Commission by persons seeking to govern the country. I wonder how many still travels or owns a Guyana passport, how many are citizens of a foreign country?
I have nothing against Non-Resident Guyanese -NRG returning home to serve, for this in itself is an honor. And I’m aware of the tremendous contributions that Guyanese like Dr. Shamir Ally has make and continues to make to our homeland. My concern, however, is the deceitful way that the AFC has done this, without any guarantees that any of the NRG will ever take up permanent residence in Guyana after November 28th., to serve the few individuals who would have voted for them. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Harry Gill

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