LET me start by saying there is agreement with every Guyanese who in 2015 cast their ballot to participate in the elections that brought about a new government. It remains my conviction the society needed the breathing space to grow and develop and I am still wedded to this belief. The growth and development we seek, however we articulate these, are built on the belief that our rights and the rule of law would take pre-eminence in our daily activities and be the centrepiece of governance. Honest reflection of the years leading up to 2015 would admit the country was falling apart.

The people’s business was conducted by a clique that had no respect for law and order. The nation experienced death squads that were given the mandate and support of government officials and state institutions, resulting in hundreds killed extra-judicially. Our natural resources were plundered without conscience. Our money was used by government and party officials to enhance personal wealth through corrupt practices. Drug lords had access to the corridors of power and were given immunity against being prosecuted. The small man’s property was confiscated by the rich and politically connected.

Laws never mattered to government officials, the privileged, and well connected. There were not many who dared to speak, report, and condemn this depraved style of governance. Fear stalked the land and the vocal suffered. The media community saw advertisements withdrawn. Mark Benschop, was made a political prisoner on a manufactured charge for treason. He, Norris Witter and I, were thrown in a faeces invested cell at Brickdam for exercising the constitutional right to peaceful assembly. Freddie Kissoon and Benschop were also locked up for engaging in a similar exercise.

There were times when the political opposition was timid to challenge and confront the government’s atrocities, or delayed in so doing, as few refused to relent in the fight to bring about good governance.
The hammer came down hard on independents in the trade union community. The Guyana Public Service Union check-off system for union dues was taken away, thereby depriving it of money and the right to carry on its business. The Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) and Guyana Bauxite and General Workers Union (GB&GWU), of which I am a member, received serious blows. The yearly subventions (grants) to the GTUC and the Critchlow Labour College (CLC), our education arm, were taken away in an attempt to silent us.

At one point the CLC’s doors were closed but thankfully under its present principal avenues were created to re-open them. The GB&GWU, which is still waging battles to respect the rights of citizens/workers and protect the sovereignty of this nation, every opportunity was taken by PPP/C governments to destroy it, starting from November 1992.

I was not silent about the misconduct of the PPP/C government and its officials in the midst of these sufferings and deprivations, so don’t expect silence now. With the change of government, and more particularly in light of the circumstances in the environment that brought about it, the citizens want genuine change not an exchange, and their pleas are just.

Let me make it clear, there are several instances where this government has moved to right the wrongs of previous governments and this remains a step in the right direction. At the same time where this government continues to make the mistakes of previous governments, more particularly where they condemned the atrocities when in the opposition, they too must be held to account for continued misconduct.

In seeking to hold this government accountable, persons are meeting me in the streets and accusing me of attacking their government, saying that under the PPP/C I did not speak out or could not have spoken. Those expressing such views don’t know me, or have conveniently forgotten, or are prepared to accept instances of poor governance because it is their party in office.

I’ll be damned having fought against injustices and violations over the years to today sit silent when there exists any inkling of same being repeated, fully aware that the consequences can be equally dire or moreso. I am wedded to universally acceptable principles not principalities, and if in the process it brings me enemies, I rather be a friend to the principles that would bring about human development because at the end of the day this is what every man, woman and child desires.

We all want to live in a society where we are treated as equals with dignity and respect. We all want a society where the enabling environment is created to ensure our health, longevity, security, and opportunities to unleash our potentials. And for these reasons time-honoured principles, universal declarations, international conventions and charters have been established. Those who come to us and offer themselves for leadership and we’re paying them, via our tax dollars, to be in service to us, we shoulder a civic duty to hold them accountable, to ensure they deliver on what we are paying them to do.

Don’t come and ask for our vote to elect you to serve us and turn around and use it for self -aggrandisement and trample the things that matter to us. When we submit to such because it is our party, or we voted for them and to speak out would mean the PPP/C will be given a chance to return, we will never achieve our true potential as a people and a society. Because in this midst there are those who seek public office to enrich themselves, not serve the people. These misconducts I do not take lightly nor will countenance.

There must be development in the performance of government and the way officials treat with the people and their resources, and I am committed in doing my part to make it happen. Being wedded to principles invariably would find me agreeing and disagreeing with persons across the political divide based on their upholding or violating the tenets of good governance. I am in pursuit of this and care not from which quarter it comes from.