Champion of the Earth?

Dear Editor,

Imagine my disappointment when I visited the airport last week to see a massive billboard of President Jagdeo with the words “Champion of the Earth.”

The earth?! The earth?! Surely the earth cannot contain this Superman of the Environ-ment. “Champion of the Universe” would be more appropriate. I don’t know who paid for this billboard but they should be lambasted for the sleight against an apparent demi-god who slipped the surly bonds of Guyana years ago and set forth with begging bowl in hand to save the planet one eco-summit at a time.

Never mind that the city he lives in occasionally is one huge pile of garbage; that the volcanic Mandela Avenue Landfill has migrated so far it has been renamed the Le Repentir Cemetery Landfill. Never mind that the city floods after two mornings of rain thanks to his government’s failure to clean the drains.

Nor that his Low Carbon Development Strategy involves drilling for high carbon oil.

Raising these objections is unpatriotic and an offence to His Excellency. It gets him mad. And we don’t want him mad.

And we must also congratulate the minister who arranged for all the schoolchildren from Timehri to Georgetown to stand on the road last week and wave little flags as he passed.

Young minds must be moulded to believe that His Excellency will rank among the great leaders of world history and that any President of Guyana must be revered, praised, worshipped, rather than held accountable to his people. That he does not serve us but we serve him.

Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)