Dear Editor,
The elephants are at war (PPP/APNU/AFC) in Parliament and the whole of Guyana is trampled underfoot. Politicians do take the electorate for granted. They believe that once they become members of parliament, the grandstanding begins.
I was waiting with great suspense for the salvos from Freedom House directed at Ralph Ramkarran. Why weren’t they fired?
The PNC in government was corrupt; the PPP even more so. So, the politicians in the APNU and PPP (and AFC) need to accept that fact and tone down the rhetoric. You cannot call fish of one and fowl of the other.
However, corruption has to be confronted head on and the time is now and here. And we need to rally around Mr Ramkarran’s call to investigate the stables.
To deny corruption is like denying that the rain falls and the sun shines. To deny that party comrades are protected for stealing is to accept that we are a nation of saints. From the NDCs to the regions to the ministries, there is wide-ranging corruption – from the issue of contracts to procurement. So, let us save what is left of this country and demand some transparency. Simultaneously, however, let us go about it in a way which will prevent the present gridlock from strangling the country.
My humble suggestion would be for the parliamentary parties to agree to five issues over which the pall of corruption hovers, assemble an investigation team of two representatives from each party and three independent members, and thoroughly thrash out these five issues. Let the chips fall where they will and appropriate consequences be applied. Who must be prosecuted, let them. The guilty have been messing with our money, not theirs.
The executive should be allowed by the opposition majority to proceed with their budgetary programmes, but the oversight bodies must do their work to ensure that the straight and the narrow are traversed.
I feel strongly that if President Ramotar wishes to be his own man and go down in history as a strong president, he must cut the mavericks from the herd.
The loss of support must be seen as a hard lesson by the PPP. The people are simply fed up with corrupt practices. The President, should exorcise the ‘jumbies‘ who have put the party in the firing line – be they at the grass roots level or at Freedom House. Failing this, the PPP will be a forgotten party in less than a decade from now.
And Linden should back off. They have lived almost free for too long. They should pay their dues. Lincoln Lewis’s family is in the USA. Disregard his tirade.
He is clinging onto a straw, as are the others.
Bravo, Ralph Ramkarran! We need more like him. Soon all those in the party who have a conscience will follow him.
Yours faithfully,
Godfrey Skeete
