We should all be asking questions about the Mike Pompeo visit

Sep 17, 2020 Letters

Dear Editor,

Sigh. I am keenly aware that in the toxic, divided and violent atmosphere that is contemporary Guyana, lots of claims are being made, both at home and in the diaspora. People are asked what they said for the last six months as a way of deciding whether they should speak now (let me suggest that this is a standard that we should have been applying for the last three decades, truth be told). The insults are personal and vitriolic. Ad hominem attacks – off the cuff, usually unresearched, it is much easier and more fun that way, I suppose – are the new order of the Guyanese day.
I would not normally respond as there are way too few hours in the day, but I only write now because on the eve of a visit to Guyana by the US Secretary of State, I do care about the distraction that attacking the messenger creates, when it takes our attention away from the questions all Caribbean citizens should all be asking right now, and because this has implications not just for Guyana but for Latin America and the Caribbean. Let me just offer two thoughts. For all those waxing lyrical about what was said or not said over the last six months, (1) similar questions could be asked of all these voices over the past three decades, but I would rather say more power that you speak now and may you continue to speak in a consistent, principled manner while modelling the kind of tone and engagement you would like to see among future generation of Guyanese, without fear or favour (2) the position of many of us on the Guyanese elections, including Karen de Souza, is on public record for all to see, in letters we were involved in mobilising a wide cross-section of signatures for, and which appeared in local newspapers for all to read (titled “In Support of a transparent recount of ballots” and “We demand our fundamental rights to free and fair elections be immediately restored”). And I stand by what we signed then.
In the face of the visit to Guyana by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (about which all should be asking questions), on the eve of his own country’s elections (about which all Guyanese should also ask questions in the name of democracy), this is what we need to pay most careful attention to right now.
Yours truly,
Alissa Trotz

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