Dear Editor
IT is said that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” The problem with loving money is that no matter how much one gets, one still feels compelled to try to get as much more as one can of land, property, and other things that money can buy, even though we see in sickness and death, that it really was not that important after all. The love of money, greed, acquiring more and more, blinds the greedy individual to the joy and the peace that the use (not the love) of money can bring; and so mental problems and illnesses increase.
We perish if we forget that for 23 years, we had a greedy administration of people who looked after themselves, not us, as they yielded to greed. They took as much as they could for themselves and those close to them.

Now that, that group is no longer in power, their thirst for power (and ill-gotten gain) is such a strong motivator for them to continue to deprive the citizens of Guyana of a better life. In their blindness to the pitfalls related to the love of money, they tend to miss the bigger picture, i.e. that we all are one, and though they may have acquired the biggest houses, the biggest bank accounts, cars, etc., (whatever their poison is), they are all the poorer for it, and should be pitied. This is not to say that it is bad to have or to own things, but one has to be wise about how they are acquired.
What the greedy ones want to do is to keep the rest of us from creating an environment that enables us to move up; by conning us once more into believing that they were good to us over the 23 years that they were in power. They appeal to the ignorant and racist among us; those who lack the ability to think for themselves, or hide from truth, thereby making their minds sick.

An enabling environment takes time. Four years is not enough time, although we are seeing the signs of creativity emerging from a people who no longer feel fearful and can now express their views; although sometimes it seems to me that this new-found freedom makes us light-headed, that we have so many opinions now that can cause us to “shoot ourselves in the foot”, while executing our “constitutional right to free speech”, which may be nothing more than falling for the propaganda of the opposition.

It is up to you if you want to be tricked by the opposition, because of their appeal to your own greed, which makes you irrational in your thinking, that a government that has been in power for four short years can undo all the damage of 23 years, that they inherited. There was and still is a lot of mess to clean.If we are impatient and expect miracles, we will find ourselves back under the people that ripped us off for 23 years.

No one is perfect and neither is the APNU+AFC government, but they have done a lot to reverse the harm that the previous government, the opposition, inflicted on us. Many of our children, who grew up under the previous administration, who are now placed in offices in positions of authority, believe and have learnt from them, that it is okay to have no ethics, to blame others for their own bad actions, to make others feel as unworthy as they themselves do, as a result of their own greed and less than honest behaviours, derived from a love of money acquired from watching the opposition operate while they were the government!

Our children deserve better!!
Allow your minds to recall how insecure this country had become, how lawless people were (and still are in many ways), how you had to keep silent about evil, and how there is a chance now, although difficult, to pull back from the brink of self-destruction, from the brink of living the lie that the opposition peddles. They do not mind destroying a whole country to fulfil their selfish, personal ambitions.

The APNU+AFC government is not perfect, but it is way better in terms of morals and concern for the majority of citizens, as compared with what we had for 23 years. Do not be fooled by the noise the opposition makes to drown out common sense. Be aware, that they still have people in the offices stymieing the work of the government, to make the government look bad.

It is repugnant to hear the opposing forces who took as much as they could for themselves, actually speaking about decency and pronouncing on right and wrong, when their own conscience buries all the wrong that they did over the 23 years of their rule!!

Regards
Rosemarie Terborg Davis