The imputation of ill-will couldn’t be more transparent

Aug 23, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

As I was busying myself getting down to my responsibility as a newly appointed Commissioner of the Guyana Election Commission (GECOM), my attention was drawn to Tacuma Ogunseye’s letter to the editor in the August 19, 2022 edition of S/N; ‘Rohee’s message is crystal clear.’

I usually do not reply to letters referring to me as racist and especially when the letters are laced with racial innuendoes. In that regard, the content and objective of Ogunseye’s letter are crystal clear. The imputation of ill-will couldn’t be more transparent.

Ogunseye’s repeated and careless resort to a divisive mantra in a society characterised by ethnic insecurity and political polarisation not only fits perfectly with a narrative that reflects intellectual stagnation, it is combustible and hazardous.

In case he hasn’t noticed it, in his letter, Ogunseye portrays himself as both victim and struggler with the same old, same old narrative. It in this context, that he fails to recognise that since August 2020, and their experience with the vagaries of the COVID-19 pandemic, Guyanese from all walks of life have decidedly moved on with their lives economically.

That apart, Guyanese today are more roundly educated than they were in the past when the soil was fertile for such obstructionist thinking to germinate.

While the overarching sense of identity of African Guyanese has assumed a more enlightened approach as manifested in the observance of Emancipation Day and its various cultural manifestations, the thickened and non-expansive approach to African advancement by Ogunseye has depreciated significantly so much so that Guyanese of other ethnic back grounds participate fully and with a sense of togetherness in the annual Emancipation Day’s observances.

It is this kind of togetherness shown by the Guyanese people that demonstrates joy not anger, empathy and purpose as well as a predisposition for problem-solving as their preference rather than be shackled to an axe to grind and to be trapped in an echo-chamber of Ogunseye’s making.

Instead of fanning the flames of race in our delicately balanced multi-ethnic society, Ogunseye should join in the common search to find ways to balance different values and interests in our pluralistic society.

The enigmatic Buxtonian chose to rail against my appointment as a newly appointed Commissioner of GECOM and sought to extract juice from my comments and to mix it with paranoia and hatred for the politics of the PPP/C.

According to Ogunseye, my ‘message is crystal clear’. He claims that; ‘The PPP wants the composition of GECOM’s staff to change – there are too many Africans.’

As far as I am aware, the PPP has never said what Ogunseye claims nor did I in my remarks. It is as if he has convinced himself that what he saw was a duck, then a duck is all he would see.

I make no pretense that electoral reforms in general and institutional reforms at GECOM in particular, in whatever shape or form are badly needed in light of our March to August 2020 experience.

During that period, Ogunseye was deliberately and uncannily silent about the need to remove as it were, the dead, damaged and infected flesh from the decaying electoral practices of the APNU+AFC and to expose the democratic process to healthy tissue as currently obtains.

My appointment as a Commissioner at GECOM has so infuriated Ogunseye that it’s announcement literally threw a wrench upsetting his ominous ‘demonstration of solidarity’ forcing him to express publicly his disagreement with the PPP’s and government’s decision.

Because the age of maturity and enlightenment has not penetrated the deep recesses of Ogunseye’s psyche, his language is not surprising. His failure to move away from bitterness and anger towards a more constructive engagement with the democratic opening that emerged in August of 2020 defeats his organisation’s call for a ‘political solution’ published in June 15, 2022 in sections of the media.

In his letter of August 19, Ogunseye failed convincingly to come to terms with the big picture in which Guyana now features prominently on the world stage.

Ogunseye is obviously unhappy with what he described as my ‘return to public political life’ as if it were he who had consigned me elsewhere. He falls back on his usual diatribe about the PPP/C’s ‘racially discriminatory policies,’ its ‘false reality denial cry,’ and describing Guyana elsewhere as a ‘criminalised state,’ and a ‘full blown dictatorship.’

I am sure he would have listened attentively to Vice President Jagdeo’s recent Press Conference where he clearly enumerated the new laws that are coming with respect to the holding of future elections in Guyana.

Further, Ogunseye must have heard about the PPP/C government’s concrete efforts to empower our African Guyanese brothers and sisters and their children by granting scholarships, small business grants, more lands and affordable housing and generous cash grants to members of the joint services.

Ogunseye must be wrestling with what he perceives as contradictory – how can his ‘full-blown dictatorship’ and his ‘criminalised state’ be implementing progressive, people-centered measures that bring such tangible economic and social benefits to Guyanese and our children from all walks of life and across political and ethnic lines.

The challenge to reconcile these progressive measures with Ogunseye’s cyclopian characterisation of the PPP/C administration must be an extremely difficult one.

Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee

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