Dear Editor
LEADER of the political opposition People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), Bharat Jagdeo’s response to Minister of State Joseph Harmon’s statement at the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Sophia meeting could have been anticipated, as the night follows the day.

What Jagdeo in his now easily predicted and expected culture of deceit and dishonesty is attempting to do is to mislead a statement of fact by the Minister of State into one that purports threats of an ethnic nature against his Indo Guyanese support base, hence his threat of reporting Mr. Harmon’s statement to the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC). This is another of Jagdeo’s famed red herrings, and must be exposed for what it is.

What the Minister of State has pronounced on can be discerned in every PPP/C controlled NDC, in which there are Afro Guyanese, and has been the fact of PPP/C local governance towards Afro Guyanese communities during its 23 years in office. The irony is that it still is a pattern of PPP/C discriminatory behaviour, even though there is a change of government. It does not take an alien to make such a vivid observation.

In fact, Minister Harmon’s accurate observation has been the source of constant complaints from his party supporters that pre-dates the recently held Local Government Elections, and therefore has nothing to do with its results as Jagdeo would have expectedly peddle as a response.

Up until now Harmon’s statements of the very well known racist practice by PPP/C- controlled NDCs has been seen to be long overdue. In fact, there have been numerous warnings to the coalition government by letter writers and well known political commentators about highly questionable practices not in the public interest, carried out by persons in the public service known for their alignment to the PPP/C.

However, rather than expose the PPP/C not only on this particular aspect of its racist culture, but also on practices such as stymieing the implementation of socio-economic projects in the wider public service, which actions are designed to bring the government into disaffection with the country’s citizens, the government adopted a position of non-confrontation, while in the process seeking to have the cooperation of Jagdeo in his role as a constitutional office holder.

Although the door has still been left open for this to happen, it has not been a successful strategy, since the leader of the opposition is only interested in total and complete power and ethnic dominance for his party as a government. In all this, the government has chosen to ignore Jagdeo and his daily political deceptions, while concentrating on the more important undertaking of cleaning up the national mess left by his former PPP/C government.

Jagdeo must be reminded that the coalition government did not take office to be pre-occupied with his daily subterfuge, inclusive of incessant lies, racist divisiveness, and daily misleading statements aimed at bringing the government into dispute with the citizens of this country. Its mandate is to govern in the interest of all Guyana and its people, unlike the PPP/C which carried out a programme of institutionalised racism.

However, there is an overwhelming consensus, one which is much supported, that the government’s seemingly ignoring of Jagdeo has resulted in him looming larger than he should, and that he and his party’s dirty deceptions should have been rebutted ever since. Just imagine, a former leader whose government degutted this country criminally in every respect, alleging the current coalition as the most corrupt in this country’s history, and in the Caribbean!

No one denies Jagdeo his right of speech, especially if it is constructively honest, for this administration has not put a muzzle on any of its daily critics, including those with political agendas that continue to unfairly criticize the current administration. But those criminal lies and egregious tactics that are the daily slew of the opposition leader and his party must be exposed and be refuted.

He must also be further reminded that the government, same as his party does, has a responsibility to respond to matters that affect its party support base; and it is time that it does, because what continuously obtains in the PPP-controlled NDCs is iniquitous and unfair. Minister Harmon’s statement is therefore one of fact and has nothing to do with attacking Indo-Guyanese.

Regards
Dillon Goring