Dear Editor,
I believe that there are honest men and women who do their best to do good within the limitations of our political system. I have not decided which – pity or admiration – is the right thing to feel for them. But the people I consider to be good and honest come from both government and opposition.
They say that one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel. These few good people work in a barrel where more than half the apples are rotten. And even if we attempt to clean the existing barrel of its stink, the residue of decay will eventually cause the good ones to rot as well. And if decay is inevitable for all the apples in this barrel then where does this leave us?
Last week People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Member of Parliament (MP) and former Minister of Education Priya Manickchand prefaced her budget address by quoting from my recent blog (‘It is time’) and described me as a “prolific” young writer.
I would have been flattered had she not proceeded to label me as the government’s “disillusioned” and “disappointed” “champion of change” and to use my words merely as a political tool to take a jab at the APNU+AFC coalition government.
Ms Manickchand told her colleagues in parliament that nine months ago I was a champion of change and she qualified that by adding that she got “the impression that she is [I am] the champion of change of the culture of politics”. I believe that Ms Manickchand is too brilliant to have simply just gotten “the impression” of what my words mean.
She ended her introductory remarks by turning to the government MPs and telling them “your champion of change”. It is this attempt by Ms Manickchand to label me – more than anything else – which disappoints me and it is this attitude of treating people and their work as if they were only political tools which disillusions many of us.
And Ms Manickchand is partially right. I am a champion of change, but not the sort of change she implies. I am a champion of change for the hardworking people of this country who entrust politicians with their lives without realizing that these people do not operate within a system that allows them to make the sort of decisions that can give Guyanese the true good life.
Change is the act or process through which something becomes different. The thing I want to see become different is our inhumane politics which has divided this nation from Mabaruma to beyond Dadanawa.
And I do not believe that one set of politicians from any side is solely responsible for this division. I believe that all of them and all of us are responsible because we have all allowed ourselves to be manipulated by a set of ideas.
In my blog, I refer to politicians using the collective pronoun “they”. When I say “they”, I mean every single political leader. It does not matter if they are PPP or APNU or AFC, they are all apples in the same barrel. They are either rotten or they fail to speak out about the stink because of their allegiance first and foremost to their party.
And since we are doomed to eventually lose the few good but silent men and women to the stink in this barrel, it is now more important than ever for them to pave the way for new leaders capable of building a new system around new ideas. They owe this much to this nation and its children.
Yours faithfully,
Sara Bharrat
