MIKE Persaud in his letter in Stabroek News (Tuesday, June 3, 2014) seems euphoric that APNU Leader David Granger was able to hold a meeting in the Queens/Richmond Hill area in the USA. He sees that as a significant breakthrough for the PNC to have been able to hold a meeting in what he considers to be a PPP stronghold. In his words, a ‘taboo’ has been broken since no Afro-Guyanese was supposed to come to Richmond Hill.

The PPP, unlike the PNC has never claimed exclusive political rights over any constituency or region. Indeed, the party’s political reach has extended beyond any particular area and remains the only party that has transcended the boundaries of race and ethnicity.
In this regard, the PPP can be regarded as the only genuine multi-ethnic national political party in the country for having successfully made significant electoral inroads in a number of strategic constituencies which at one time or the other was predisposed to vote for other parties.
The United Force, for example, during the 1960s had substantial Amerindian support but this support whittled away over the past two or three decades to a point where that Party for all practical purposes is today nothing more than a paper organisation. The same could be said for Afro-Guyanese support especially in Regions Ten and Four which have demonstrated within the recent past a shift in political pattern in ways that cannot be considered insignificant in favour of the ruling PPP/ administration.
This changing political dialectic is the result of a growing awareness among the Guyanese people that the PPP and the PPP/C administration is the only political organisation that has both the capacity and the political will to effect meaningful changes to the country in a way that could advance the overall good of the Guyanese people. The PPP can proudly say without fear of contradiction that it has never sought to obtain power by fraudulent means something which the Granger-led PNC is now struggling to find answers to especially in the context of new revelations coming out of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry regarding the PNC’s complicity in the murder of Dr. Rodney and more generally in the suppression of the democratic rights of the Guyanese people and free speech.

Mike Persaud, a known PNC supporter, expressed his disappointment that Granger at his New York meeting failed to admit to the rigging of elections on behalf of his Party, the PNC. But Granger not only refused to make an apology he went on to blame the PPP for also ‘rigging’ elections during the post-1992 period. This assertion is not only infantile but politically disingenuous since Mr. Granger is seeking to justify one big lie with an even bigger lie. This approach by Granger to deny the past can only do further damage to the already battered image and credibility of the PNC.
I feel that there is full justification in President Donald Ramotar’s decision to hold an inquiry into the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney. This is good for the political health of this nation. This inquiry is tantamount to a Truth Commission in which the country is cleansed of its previous wrongdoings and can henceforth move forward to a new beginning in which there is no baggage from the past.
One final point that needs some clarification, Granger reportedly said that Guyana is the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean where the military never intervened in the political affairs of the country. This is totally ludicrous since there are so many documented evidence of the role of the army in the hijacking of ballot boxes in elections. The shooting to death of two PPP supporters in Corentyne in the 1973 elections by the military remains until this day a lasting shame on the PNC and could hardly escape the attention of Granger who at that time was a key player in the military apparatus of the state.
There can be no denial of the fact that the country under the PNC regime experienced a quasi-military rule where the army was used as an instrument to subvert the democratic aspirations of the Guyanese people.

DEXTER GLASGOW