Dear Editor
This nonsense about cabinet ministers’ monetary rewards keeps going on and on in the press, and people keep asking me what I think about it. So here’s my latest simplistic rant. Whistling into the wind… again.
Why are we sucked into a transparent diversionary tactic, on a subject worthy only of its instigators, sent out in the very face of the forensic audits supposedly in progress? Can we forget all the high-minded promises of the coalition’s campaign, for inclusiveness, transparency, reform and honest service? Who thinks we weren’t listening? Are we all so brainwashed that we’d fall for vicious arguments like, “Oh, so-and-so was a successful professional, earning millions a month, do you expect him to give that up to be a minister?”
Let us shout the answer: Yes! …We do expect him, and all of them, to prove by sacrifice that the good of their country means more to them than money. Sacrifice for credibility. Prove you’re not in it for the money, or you’re not the ones we need. Remember, we can get rid of you too, like we just did – just barely.
And the other high politicians, not in the cabinet, because they frankly can’t afford to take a cut in income? Their lifestyle is more expensive than can be sustained on a minister’s pay. Well, anyone with such a lifestyle is an open insult to poor people who deserve leaders, preferably the ones they elect, who can see life from a roots perspective. You are not qualified to give advice, or make decisions, from a seat of luxury, for the mass of Guyanese stuck in material and moral
degradation.
Here’s the silver lining to that red herring: that it serves to remind our elected politicians, sitting in our Parliament or not: Choose between honest service to the highest public good, or choose wealth and ostentation, as symbols of inequality and the decline of Guyanese humanity. Which were we promised?
Yours faithfully,
Gordon Forte
