From the time I launched Tradewinds in Trinidad in 1967, I have been to Guyana almost every year, sometimes twice a year. I was coming here with the band, sometimes merely on holiday, and I always kept in touch with the homeland, so I was familiar with what was going on. I had seen the socialism years and the economic decline. I had seen the turnaround started by Desmond Hoyte and continued by the PPP. I knew about the Harbour Bridge and the rise of the mini-bus culture. In later years, I knew of the neglected City Hall, garbage on Georgetown streets, and the rising seas. As a result, when I moved back here to live in 2009 there were no surprises in Guyana for me; I was aware of the bumps. Until 2011 that is when, to my utter shock, candidates in the general election let loose a barrage of invective that I never knew as part of the Guyanese political culture. Now, as another election looms, the invective has returned and in recent weeks it has reached, as a Trinidadian friend in Toronto put it, “the height of lowness.”
One has to hope that the public rejection of these personal political attacks will put a damper on things, and it is heartening to see some instances of persons within the leading parties calling out their own for such remarks, but the rise of this sordid attack practice leaves one to wonder what kind of people we have become where the persons who are aspiring to lead us are sometimes demonstrating what can only be described as contempt for the very people they represent. It is worth noting that a
