What is needed for real change in Guyana now!

Jun 29, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I read the June 26 AFC Column in the Kaieteur News as impassionately as I could. I let the recommended 24 hours pass and so forth. I am/was a member of the AFC and the WPA but I am first Guyanese.
I really feel passionately that Guyanese at home and abroad have an opportunity in the general elections in 2011 to make Guyana turn the corner into sustained, inclusive development. We have wasted enough time.
I don’t think we can afford to take a chance in the upcoming elections and therefore hope for a good outcome, which for me is the PPP not getting the Presidency.
In my view, to ensure that this happens the Guyanese opposition forces need to bury the hatchet and work together to win the Presidency and then govern for a maximum of three years which is enough time to get the necessary reforms passed to strip the authoritarian, dictatorial aspects from the Guyanese constitution and set a framework for inclusive governance. We can do it if we want to.
It is going to be a forced partnership, and subject to a lot of chatter from the PPP, but the political leaders in the opposition need to feel the pain of the Guyanese and keep their “principles” for 2014 or 2015. No one is going to not go to political heaven because they linked up with the PNC in 2011. Given what we know now you likely would not go to political heaven if you knowingly link up with the 2011 version of the PPP.
All this talk of parties can’t change is garbage. Parties that don’t change go into the dustbin of history, as we all do admittedly, but not being willing to change gets you into the dustbin that much quicker.
Why at this critical period in Guyanese history can’t the AFC form a political alliance for a short term purpose? The identity of the AFC would not be lost. Do the persons who want to be President in Guyana look around the world and see how many years some folks continue to fight for political office?
The difference I want to bring to the Guyana situation is that we cannot afford to roll the dice in 2011, go into the elections, then afterward if the PPP still has the presidency, just say “Next time boys and girls. We fought a good fight”.
We need a Guyanese Spring now with all the Guyanese opposition political parties and civil society working for change. In the post-PPP control situation I fully expect the PPP leadership to smell the coffee and be active participants in the constitutional reform process. I think the PPP leadership would see the opportunity to try and salvage some decency from the sorry record since 1992, and the ideas that these leaders must bring to the constitutional/governance reform process can only help Guyana.
Part of including the PPP is to forget any idea of going on a “witch hunt” after the elections. Justice must be through the legal system, though the interim government must draw a very clear line in the sand and reaffirm most robustly that Guyana is not the Wild West and that ALL are subject to the laws of the country.
To quote the quotable Roger Luncheon, ALL who break the law must be dealt with “condignly”.
The AFC column seeks to argue that because the PNC government passed the 1980 constitution, and used the state’s radio monopoly that the PNC must forever be maligned. What about the PPP doing noting significant to change the constitution, using all the authoritarian powers of the 1980 constitution, and stubbornly maintaining the state radio monopoly?
The real key is that the PPP is in government for 19 plus years and has a record now, and that record says that in the best interest of all Guyanese the party needs to get out of the way of Guyana’s inclusive development ASAP.
On economic programmes separating the rice from the straw it is no secret what a sustainable economic development programme for Guyana requires. No one party in Guyana has a monopoly on what needs to be done. It is all around us. What is needed is the will to do what needs to be done transparently, inclusively, efficiently, and with urgency.
It is about implementation. Again the PPP has a record. Amaila Falls Hydro access road??
Finally coalition among the political parties in Guyana is not a new thing. Remember the PPP’s “critical support” of the 1970s? Remember Burnham’s efforts to try and develop some sort of robust power sharing with the PPP in the early 1980s?
In summary let us all understand that time is going and Guyana is burning. Those of us who say we are interested in subverting racial politics in Guyana need to come together and push out the PPP which is the last bastion of racial politics in Guyana.
I heard for myself on a radio show in Guyana during the late 1990s a PPP supporter saying that the PNC was in power for 28 years so the PPP is going to go for 56 years. The PPP is no Singapore-like People’s Action Party and so we just can’t afford 20 years of the PPP in Guyana, much less 56. Let’s just do it! Dare I say “Yes we can!”
Fitzgerald Yaw

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