Dear Editor,
With respect to Roger Luncheon’s letter in SN on October 26 (‘Ever increasing numbers of Afro-Guyanese are imbued with the vision of the PPP/C administration’) I would have liked him to explain what PPP vision he is referring to that can inspire Afro-Guyanese.
What vision does he or his colleagues articulate? I have never heard presidential candidate Ramotar utter any sentence or group of sentences that can amount to an independent visionary spark. The fact is the very ideology that shaped the PPP has demonstrated its inability to sustain a force as independent and complete as a vision. A vision inspires, envelops and expands its flame, initiating change through its ideas and ideals. As a young man many of us were inspired by men like Fred Wills, Forbes Burnham, Martin Carter, Jake Croker, Denis Williams and many others, but who in the PPP can inspire anyone? Kwame McCoy? Bishop Edghill? Kellawan Lall? President Jagdeo who abuses citizens at his meetings on how they’re ungrateful, referring to things that were done for communities which are required to be done by government, but instead he thinks are handouts that merit homage.
One has to admit that the PPP has only attracted those who themselves have failed to inspire and whose ego compels them through resentment to escape the emptiness of their own ordinary silence for the selfish comfort of political comradeship; values or culture matter not. Vision is when one is driven to act as Brigadier David Granger (rtd) did when he created the Free Press and the Emancipation Magazine and tediously assembled the histories of peoples and places of the Afro-Guyanese communities from 1834 to present, a task never done before that spanned 1993-2009. Themes of Afro Guyanese History, among other publications, envelops the Chinese and Indo-Guyanese village movements, and places in libraries and in the hands of a generation a volume of self knowledge, empowering minds with truth rather than with political propaganda. I must add that the administration never supported his ventures and he could not even get Castellani House to exhibit his illustrations and books which were suited to a major exhibition for the International Year of People of African Descent. His vision as president will halt the retrogression of Guyana.
There is nothing about the PPP/C to inspire anyone of good conscience. In the hardships of living in Guyana you may be able to buy some people. But like his party, Dr Luncheon lacks the credibility to pass judgment on anyone or anything. At one point I even admired him as a medical doctor who was hands on on the job. But today I understand that it must be difficult to recognize that his political life has supported all he once spoke against; his political life has become a charade.
Yours faithfully,
Barrington Braithwaite
