Dear Editor,
When is the last time any Guyanese heard a word from the PPP Government about the punishing cost of living environment, and the hurt it is inflicting on ordinary Guyanese and their families? When was the last time that anyone, anywhere, has come across a concerned and compassionate thought, a moment of rare care, from President Ali, Jagdeo, or Prime Minister Phillips, for Guyanese feeling pain from cost of living wretchedness? Or even from one of the women in the PPP entity, the mothers who may not have any idea what it is to tell a hungry child that there is nothing more, it is all done? And, to push the needle to the maximum, when last have we heard from one of the religiously inclined presences in the PPP cabinet about having some care to spare for those laid low by the draining, damning, and soul destroying cost of living environment?
Who can turn their faces away from those of Crabwood Creek (SN, October 09), the latest in the long line of Guyanese felled by cost of living harshness? I think that SN’s award winning series on the cost of living has killed the consciences of politicians and their army of pundits and propagandists. Cost of living, what cost of living? Oh, those people? Well, it is this season of survival of the fittest and fastest on their feet. Play the game or pay the penalty: get left out in the heat; things are so far gone that even the PPP faithful on the lower end are unhappy with their unresponsive champions. Those who don’t bow to the government and its leading lights had better get ready to bow out of consideration; or to be bowled over for not getting with the leadership program. In this fabulously rich country, people are hungry, yet politics take precedence over all else.
One has to appreciate the highly tilted focus on infrastructure projects. What chance, what priority, do citizens and their cost of living stand in this environment, and with a dominant culture as this? Who inside the banquet hall and the music hall ever hears the cries of the famished from the outside? On the inside of those halls, one can find PPP insiders and collaborators; on the outside are the wretched of Guyana’s increasingly scorching cost of living earth. Social welfare programs have a nice sound coming from that kind of thinking. I recall that the President has a $5 billion slush fund for such conditions. Assuming that it is still in its natural untouched state, I hear Christmas bells ringing, for there is only November left to do something with it.
I am still thinking of the people; of course, the PPP may have a different kind and level of people involved. Given that Christmas falls on a Monday this year, I wonder what SN’s cost of living series would have to say in that most treasured of times?
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
