And a child shall lead them

Apr 15, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
SN 13/04/15 carried two letters, “Is the Coalition planning to win on the ignorance of our youths”, written by Rhyaan Shah, and “It takes ordinary voters to incentivize politicians to do the right thing” by Saieed I. Khalil.
Shah’s letter raises several issues but the most compelling appears to be:
a) Why does the coalition not want young people to know about the past? Are they ashamed, guilty, or afraid of being unmasked as they are not?
b) If youthful ignorance is being praised by the coalition one wonders what kind of education our children will receive should they win?
Ryhaan Shah does not need any unmasking, as a top brass in Guyanese Indian Heritage Association. Her agenda is very ethno-centric, politically slanted so that her key questions contain her agenda.
Juxtaposed to her missive is that of a 21-year-old, Saieed I, Khalil, who writes, ‘I consider myself quite knowledgeable about our nation’s troubled economic and political history, and while I am not so disingenuous as to suggest that the statist economic policies and authoritarian governance post-independence did not slow us down in development terms, I am not so blind as to believe it was all the work of one political entity operating on a complete whim and without, in some instances, the “critical support” of others.’
WOW !!!
Saieed will be voting for the first time on May 11, 2015. If he is the same person, is a young man I only met once some 10 years ago. He was introduced to me at Customs House, Georgetown, by his late father, a then die-hard PPP supporter. Saieed had either topped or finished in the top three at the Common Entrance Examinations, and his late father was very proud of him.
Following up in 2010 he was the top CSEC student obtaining 15 Grade One passes and one Grade Two pass. He met the then, President Bharrat Jagdeo, and told GINA that he was thrilled to meet the President as “he was an inspirational figure”. (Chronicle Nov. 12, 2010.)
So why this child, now young man, was so moved to not follow the ‘inspirational figure’ and his party and now publicly embraces the coalition?
The answer is education! He has researched, read and interpreted for himself the history of Guyana, and in the process rejected the bottom-house indoctrination and exhortations of the Rhyaan Shahs of this world. He formed his own opinion.
His history is not a blinkered history or a history to forget, but grounded on current realities including rejection of nepotism, friendism, and ethno-centric indoctrination.
He does not accept as an educated young Guyanese that all the blame should be on Burnham’s shoulders. Not that Burnham was blameless, but blame should be on a system that encouraged authoritarian behaviour.
He asks the question about ‘critical support’, something that Shah needs to address before lecturing to all of us. If Burnham and the PNC were so horrible, then why the PPP gave critical support? Why did they want to form a national front government with the big bad wolf?
The PNC leadership has singularly failed to frontally answer and provide answers on the policies of the late 1970s to 1985, and in the process allow the demonizing of Burnham. It is now refreshing to see a young brilliant Guyanese doing the research and articulating a different interpretation of our history so that we can move on as a nation.
I encourage young Saieed to research Desmond Hoyte’s role post 1985 on Guyana’s economic development. How he parted ways with Burnham and Jagan’s economic philosophy and laid the foundation for our current economic growth.
I agree with Shah that history matters. The study of past events and behaviour of mankind are important to guide us in our future. But to be held to ransom by our history, to be enslaved by it will forever doom us and prevent progress.
Some of the most enlightened leaders Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela have shown that they were not enslaved by their historical experiences. Why should we be?
I wish to ask Rhyaan Shah if it is not too much, to provide her answer on why the nine children and two wives of the PPP top brass, are now on their candidates list.Should we not critically examine this as part of our history lesson?
Jerome Khan

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