The combination of bad financial management and moral turpitude is a recipe for our decline as human history has shown

Feb 02, 2024 Letters

Dear Editor,

It is necessary for us to be imbued with good sense to learn from the useful lessons history offers everywhere. The great Empires, Ottoman, Greek, Roman and others collapsed, carrying with it the dismemberment of the civilisation. In every case the cause was the work of a single dictator or and a compliant oligarchy. A characteristic was greed, where the wealth was shared with and among a selective few.

In modern times, we see a possible mangling and tearing the fabric of our society by a disrespect and marginalisation of groups based on ethnicity or race, caste, tribe or gender. In today’s Guyana there is evidence of forms of marginalisation and a destruction of our cherished values. This letter seeks to address one component, that is gender and related destruction of our cherished values. For this and indeed any society to flourish and reach the height of its potential it must at all times show due regard and respect to the females in our society.

Our Guyana as part of earlier European culture tended to relegate our women folk to the making of children, household duties and work in the field and factories, where men were neither available or not interested. Thanks to the crusade to the exploits of Joan of Arc, Rosa Parks who ignited the Civil Rights Movement, Susan B. Anthony, who devoted herself to the cause of the American Anti-Slavery Association, Indira Gandhi of India, Nana Asantewa who led the forces to defeat the British and retain the Golden Stool and Emmeline Pankhurst, whose famous words “I am here as a soldier,” delivered a powerful statement that women should neither be disregarded nor considered weaklings. Today our women folks earned the right to equal treatment and not to be spat upon in any form.

In colonial Guyana the female slaves were the unsound heroines of every slave uprising and in the post-emancipation era, our women particularly of East Indian descent carried the blunt of the burden in the canefields and logies, so when in 1953, the Burnham-Jagan People’s Progressive Party won the elections, after the 1953 General Elections. I was a proud bystander when for the first time in our history, the three Js, flanked with six Ministers, marched majestically and took their seats in our Parliament. The first females in our history to sit in our Parliament, Janet Jagan, Jane-Phillips-Gay and Jessie Burnham. This was a historic and glorious moment for all of our people.

A moment that vindicated the struggle of our women who were always in the vanguard opposing slavery, imperialism and colonialism. It was therefore a moment of sadness that from the PPP side in our Parliament, we have members of Parliament showing such disrespect to female Parliamentarians. The three Js must be turning in their graves and for those of us who are alive as I did, wept when Parliamentarians can talk about ‘dildos‘, and other members of the PPP. in Parliament use banalities describing female Parliamentarians who occupy the hollow chambers of our Parliament.

What is worrisome, what is distressing Editor, and what is almost unbelievable the Speaker seems to have an attack of deafness and I hope for two things, first, that the Honourable Minister of Health with the abundance of money available provides the speaker with up-to-date audio enhancing equipment so he can hear and act when MPs openly show such disrespect to female members of our Parliament.

Second, if there is a modicum of decency, if there is a tincture of respect for our females, the three offending PPP Parliamentarians should either offer a full public apology or President Ali should ask for their resignation.

Dear Editor, the above is to save our country from a slide into the suck-sand of oblivion. When they ignore what may seem to some to be small acts of indecency we create conditions like a malignant ulcer that can take over the entire body politic, if not removed with dispatch.

What worries me more is that on the Government side I’ve grown to have a high regard for Minister Vindhya Persaud, whose father and members of her family rank among the best Guyanese I know. She and others must break their silence or else they would be damned and held responsible for this dissent and the rending of the already torn fabric of our society. The urgency for a sort of moral renaissance is patent as our country is experiencing the rape of our natural resources and the spending spree supported by a well-oiled propaganda machine. If we allow this type of behaviour seen in Parliament to be swept under the carpet, all of those who remain silent will be guilty of presiding over our descent into dark dungeons of despair, degradation and decay. The fact that this display of uncouth behaviour was in the presence of students makes the above call one that ought not to be postponed. The combination of bad financial management and moral turpitude is a recipe for our decline as human history has shown.

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