Dear Editor,
If the choice of a venue was ever an indicator of the nature of an event, then I should have known what to expect at Saturday’s (May 19, 2012) meeting with President Ramotar at Moka Night Club in New York. Maybe my disappointment is owing to my lack of familiarity with the way the Government of Guyana conducts such engagements with Guyanese in the diaspora. Lack of familiarity or not, it is difficult to imagine any sort of protocol allowing members of the audience to patronize a bar while a Minister of Government and the Head of State, or controller of the executive as Mr Ramotar puts it, addresses them. This, however, was not the only source of my disappointment. Inappropriateness in the form of young women dancing to Machel Montano’s music to entertain the audience, disrespect on the part of attendees who remained seated while the national anthem was being sung and the boisterousness of the crowd towards the back disappointed me initially. As the meeting progressed, my disappointment increased.
At no time was the audience meaningfully engaged by having their questions or concerns accommodated. Instead, Dr Ashni Singh and Mr Donald Ramotar took the opportunity to sell the idea of a good administration and an evil opposition to Guyanese. To aid the sale of that idea, Dr Singh stressed the economic growth Guyana has experienced over the last five or so years, Mr Ramotar cited the testimonies of Guyanese who hadn’t returned home in years, and who are pleasantly surprised and encouraged by the development they see upon their return, and both questioned the motives of the opposition parties – APNU and AFC – especially on issues such as the choice of Speaker of the House and the 2012 budget. Being that discrediting and refuting each other tends to be an inherent quality of political parties, my focus is the matter of economic growth emphasized by Dr Singh and the development alluded to by Mr Ramotar.
What is the development alluded to by Mr Ramotar that Guyanese returning home to visit have seen? With a degree of certainty, I can assume he means newly built roads, bridges and buildings. But does infrastructural development really embody development? No. True development takes the human resource into consideration. Its main concern is the improvement of people’s quality of life. Have Guyanese who return home to visit seen this? Guyana’s rank of 117 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI), an indicator of economic development, leads me to think
otherwise, and reaffirms my assumption that the reference to development is limited to infrastructure. This is simply because no rational individual can conclude that there has been true development in a country with a ranking of 117 on the HDI, which measures “development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income.” The question of the impact of the economic growth emphasized by Dr Singh, and that of whose lives it has improved then present themselves. I fear the answers might not be very encouraging.
No critique is complete without recommendations, and I as I conclude I humbly suggest that the next time the President of Guyana, or any state official for that matter, meets with any diasporic community, that he chooses a more suitable venue; one which does not allow a bar to be patronized while officials of the state are speaking. A lecture hall at a university or college, or the auditorium of a high school would be far more suitable. There is also no need to entertain the audience by having young women dance to ‘fête music’ on stage, as I would think that the sole purpose of attendance is to listen to the speaker. And finally, while painting the opposition in a certain light may be a trait of ruling parties, need I remind the PPP that it was Nadira Jagan-Brancier, not the member of an opposition party, who recently joined the voices of criticism as she accused the party of seemingly abandoning the high standards of “honesty, integrity … and morality” her parents valued.
Yours faithfully,
Rennie Rajwant
