Which is more important to our development, allegiance or competence?

Dear Editor,

Taxi-man again, complaining about his child mother overseas with their only child. “He going to have to grow up there, go to school, get citizenship, before he come back home to help me out. Should he give up his overseas citizenship if he wants to go into politics? Because he would be showing greater allegiance by coming back home. What about all the others like him, who have to go abroad to pursue their education and might have to spend a long time and might have to become citizens there?

Are you calling this ‘allegiance’, when all they really want to do is come back home and contribute?

Which is more important to our development, allegiance or competence?

Right now and in the future, we are going to have a whole lot of new technology, systems and equipment. How are we going to learn to manage and use these things?

We might very well have to bring in people from overseas with their own citizenships to mind our businesses.

Running the government is an important part of our business. With this ‘two-bit’ population Guyana has, the chances are that we are going to have to exclude too many qualified dual citizens from public office.

What about our Caricom friends and neighbours? I hear we have something called the CSME. If we can’t get work here why should they offer us work in their country?

Somebody tell me about putting country first. What about the country putting its people first?

So that our people don’t have to hide their conscience, why not make them pledge allegiance first to our country? Don’t we need the talent? Anywhere you look, it is scarce like hell.

Look who we getting for President – an ‘online’ graduate. Is this not the type of infirmity resulting from our current crop of schizophrenics? How you like that word?”

“Me, I have to search it up in the Parliamentary dictionary. But I think it means split in half: 33-32.”

“But last thing, you think that when this ‘discrimination’ clause was put in the constitution, the writers anticipated such a fallout? If so they would have made the majority 34-32 out of 66.”

You must be kidding!

Yours faithfully

E.B. John