Dear Editor,
What a general election this has been. Never before I have seen one so closely contested, with Amerindian trying to convince fellow Amerindian of the need for a change. Many more of our people would have voted for change but the PPP/C used the most potent weapon – fear − to persuade many of them to stay with the party lest there be a change and the PNC returned to power and bad things could happen to us.
Thank heaven, the APNU+AFC alliance won, and hopefully a new era in Guyana politics can begin. Since independence we have been dogged by racialism, and this race factor has kept us distrustful of each other, hampered our progress, and kept us divided. Although we are a nation rich in resources that is why we are so poor.
I was moved to tears when Mr Granger now president, told us he went to an Amerindian village and saw all the children attending school barefoot; that surely tells us about the level of poverty that exists among our people, not only in that village but everywhere I go. I’m sick and tired of seeing our people in poverty and marginalized, and often wonder if it’s not a deliberate policy to control us and force us to be content with the scraps from the master’s table.
Today all we ask for is to give us a new deal. What we are hoping to see is this new government undertake a comprehensive review of programmes and policy, that could better the lives of our people.
As a citizen I would like to give my little bit of advice to this new government: good government requires that rules and the law be amended to suit the changing needs of the people.
I now wish the President and his cabinet all the best as they settle down to work for the betterment of this nation, so we can look with pride on this historic election, and say this was an election when all Guyanese won.
Yours faithfully,
Stephen Ashby
