My open letter to President Granger

Feb 03, 2019 Letters

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Dear President Granger,

It is my profound hope that you recover soonest. I can only imagine the twin burden imposed upon you by your quest to restore your health fully, and the weight of your government being at the crossroads. My personal view is that the opposition demonstrated itself most insensitive and as lacking compassion when it used the occasion of your ill health to interrogate in parliament the competence of your government. But I am reminded that in politics, as in war, one strikes his opponent when his opponent is at his weakest. I am minded also that politics, especially in polarised societies as ours, is war. The sad thing about politics, and war, Mr. President, is that a few persons motivated by self-interest and ego engage in acts which consequences are devastating for the masses of the people. Our politics, since our attainment of independence, has done nothing but injure more than it has healed our countrymen; it has carved oceans instead of built bridges between us; it has employed our massive resources to enrich a few while the masses of our countrymen (of all races) account for the seemingly permanent poor among us. These things you already know, of course. A Guyana that we can feel completely proud of and at home in continues to elude us.
Mr. President, in May 2015, I travelled home to join thousands of Guyanese in exercising our democratic franchise. I had never before seen our countrymen so eager to vote. I saw youths who had only recently qualified (for the first time might I emphasise) to be issued an identification card lined up from very early in the morning to vote; I saw young people who never before exhibited an interest in politics or voting mobilise folks to go to the polls; I saw persons who must be too old to remember their age lined up to vote; I saw folks afflicted by a variety of infirmities lined up to vote. The national chorus at that time was one of ‘change,’ but not just any change Mr. President; but the change that the Coalition promised to deliver. More than anyone else, the masses of Guyanese, I suspect, reposed their confidence in you. You presented yourself as an upright man, a man who holds his own integrity as being among his highest ideals. The masses of Guyanese, I presume, have not altered their belief that you are a man of high integrity- a man who has the potential to be a unifier. Integrity is a sacred virtue, a virtue, which has been too long removed from our politics. It refreshed us to find it in you.
Integrity and the potential to unify the ethnic factions in our country, as sacred as they are, are just components of leadership and not the full essence of it. What has disappointed us the most, Mr. President, are some of the people you have surrounded yourself with. Some of the key people you have surrounded yourself with have amplified arrogance and dwarfed humility; pronounced insensitivity instead of consideration; and others have been evidently incompetent. They have not only hurt your administration. They have brought into question your fortitude as a leader. I rather suspect that the political capital of some of those persons is nothing more than party loyalty through years of service. This cannot be the foremost criterion upon which we charge persons with the responsibility to repair our country and secure her progress.
Mr. President, we are at the fork in the road, not at the end of it. Whether elections are in March 2019 or sometime in 2020, our countrymen need to understand that our main choice comes election day is to elect back into office the opposition which has lost its way since the passing of its founder, or your government which has been visited in its three years with misfortunes occasioned by some of the folks you reposed confidence in and a public relations machinery which has been unhelpful. These are our choices unless we are presented with an alternative that surpasses appealing. I will be brutally honest when I say that that I am more inclined to choose your government over the former; but I would much prefer to have as a choice a much better version of your government. No one can deny the missteps of your government; but, objectively, it has come nowhere close to the atrocities of the opposition (as government) after the demise of Dr. Jagan. Objectively, three-years is a short time to reverse in a persuasive way the devastating effects of the post-Jagan PPP government. Your administration, Mr. President, has done, I dare say, a horrible job at communicating this to our countrymen. It has equally done a poor job at bringing to our notice the accomplishments of your government to date.
Do not interpret my constant critique of your government, and the sustained critique of other commentators, as my (our) wanting your government to fail. I wish no such fate on any government as it would be wishing devastation upon our countrymen. We simply want you to get it right. Ours cannot continue to be an election between the lesser of two evils. Until something better emerges, I would rather chance my country’s future to a government that is still finding its way, having regard to its infancy, than to one, which has mastered the art of acting contrary to the collective interests of our countrymen.
I wish the collection of parties, which comprises your government a speedy growth. A necessary place to start is by shedding the weight of those who are too heavy for your progress.

Humbly yours
Ronald J. Daniels
Concerned Guyanese

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