Petty politics has returned to the Ali government

Oct 05, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

It is with great sadness and disgust that I read the letter written by one Leyland Roopnarine of New York and published by Kaieteur News a few days ago. It is a powerful letter, and I will urge and encourage everyone in Toronto where I reside and elsewhere to read it to be aware of the spiteful actions of the government after being in office for only one year. The letter was critical of the lopsided oil contract handed to the nation by ExxonMobil, and how foreign companies are dominating the landscape and are awarding huge government contracts in the billions of dollars while some local contractors including BK International are being excluded. The reason given by the leaders of the PPP is that some of the contractors, BK International included have been aligned with the coalition government, therefore they must not be awarded any contract by this government.
In my opinion, all government contracts and jobs are paid for by public funds, therefore, no one should be denied a government job or a contract because of their race or political/party affiliation. To deny someone a job or a government contract is to deny him/her their fundamental rights which is a violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Further, presently, BK International is the largest construction company in the country, yet it has not been given any contract by this government. I know this because I was a former employee of BK International whose CEO was a close friend to Vice President Jagdeo and others in the PPP.
This kind of vindictiveness by the PPP, the party my entire family have supported and voted for since the 1980s, except in 2015 should not be tolerated. The Jagdeo government at the time had become very corrupt, arrogant, and callous and was viewed as the most rotten and beastly government in the Caribbean. During the 2020 election, the PPP had campaigned on governing in the interest of all regardless of race or political affiliation, but it seems that President Irfaan Ali government has gone back to its old wretched and wicked ways of punishing those who are not their supporters. The party has not learnt anything from its defeat in 2015. Not only has the government become spiteful and loathsome against its non-supporters, but it has also begun the marginalization of them in Linden, Georgetown, and New Amsterdam, the three largest black populated areas in the country. Guyana belongs to everyone and not to a selected few or the powers that be. For this reason, I fully support Leyland Roopnarine’s quote of Charles Dickens that we are in the worst of times and are in the season of darkness.
Petty politics has returned to the Ali government. The ruling elites ought to know that today’s youths will not sit idle by and allow such behaviour by the PPP to continue without a challenge as was the case twenty years ago. We are in the age of social media and the youths which are more than 65 percent of the population will react perhaps violently to it, and the ramifications will be grave. I call upon the business community, the Private Sector Commission, Civic Organizations and the good and concerned citizens among others to speak out against such injustices now or we as a nation will face the consequences.

Sincerely,
Laljit Persaud

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