I would like to comment on the letter by Anand Boodram in today’s newspaper. There is an old Chinese saying “If you focus on the past, you rob the present. If you neglect the past, you rob the future.” An understanding of the past is essential for us to understand from where we came and where we are going. But too much emphasis on the past will continue to drag us down and play a blame game that has no relevance to the present or the future. Guyana or the world for that matter is not the same today as it was, say ten, or twenty years ago. Technology and advance in communication have changed the world woo drastically, that if Burnham should return to life today, he would not be able to recognise the Guyana that he had left. As we move into the future, I urge my fellow Guyanese to stop dragging the past along with us. It will only slow us down. Keep it in the archives. As for Mr.Boodram who so self-righteously declares that he spent 16 years of his life fighting the “Burnham dictatorship”-give it a rest! We know about your “fight”. You played pink pong. I am tired of people crawling out their holes and declaring that they were fighters against the “dictator.’
There is another one in New York who uses every opportunity at his disposal to remind us of his so called” martyrdom” under the Burnham regime, and yet no one I know can remember anything about him. The future of Guyana rests with all of us pulling together, unfettered by the burdens of the past. Think about Vietnam. If the Vietnamese were focusing on their past, the way we do, they would not have been one of the giants of the Asian economy as they are now. Americans visiting Vietnam could not believe that this is the very country they tried to bomb into oblivion a generation ago.