Dear Editor,
I WRITE with reference to a letter under the title, “These assaults on journalists in Guyana exhibit the characteristics of authoritarian countries” (published on April 18, 2023). The letter by a group of 26 well-known anti-government operatives is pregnant with manufactured misinformation that would make Noam Chomsky run for cover.

There is no doubt that the group which boasts several PhDs and other professional and business types is adept at turning their failure to influence the Guyanese population into narratives of victimization and suffering.

I might also add that this bunch of mostly urban politicos with practically no contact with the grassroots of the country are equally innovative when it comes to grabbing the attention of the diplomatic corps, who incidentally is their main audience.

The latest ploy of the group of 26 is to cry about gender discrimination, and this only after their language games on race and environmentalism only succeeded (though inadvertently so) in Tacuma Ogunseye’s diabolical theatrics of aggravated racialism and state subversion.

Let us be clear about the question of gender. A reply to a letter to the editor signed by mostly women does not, in any way, make it an “attack” on women. The reply is to the content of the letter, and is oblivious to the gender of the signatories.

The group of 26 claims that they stand against all forms of violence and against racism. Yet, not one of them, either individually or as a group, has to date publicly condemned the vile, dangerous, and racially-charged call for violence against East Indians and the Afro-Guyanese leaders and supporters of the PPP/C.

To boot, these high-class people, many of them living the high lives overseas, claim to speak on behalf of the Indigenous Peoples of Guyana, something that must at once be characterised as a theft of voice.

The reader must know that while many in the group of 26 are preparing for a conference in Argentina where they will no doubt go and “bad talk” Guyana, the PPP/C is having direct, people-to-people, face-to-face contact throughout the country.

Only recently, President Ali and a team met for two days with villagers from Karasabai, Parikwarnau, Yarong Paru, Tiger Pond, Ananaputa, and Annai, in Upper Takutu, Region Nine. And then days later, Vice-President Jagdeo and Cabinet ministers met with people of the grassroots at Golden Fleece, Windsor Forest, and Leonora.

The Office of the President itself was moved to New Amsterdam, and Leonora, and will soon be temporarily located for face-to-face problem-solving outreaches in all the other administrative regions in the country.

While the PPP/C administration is busy doing actual work for the people of this country, those from the group of 26, individually and at times in smaller groups, only engage in letter writing, always with the assurance of being published by Stabroek News (in particular).
Their so-called activism might be best characterised as conative, meaning here, attempted action, as distinguished from making real, substantive contributions.

This writer has interacted extensively with the people from the villages of South PK and North Rupununi in Region Nine, to the villages across the country, including but not limited to Skeldon, No 66, 67, and 71 Village Corentyne, Tain, New Amsterdam, Rosignol, Onverwagt, Paradise, Enmore, Enterprise, Annandale, Mon Repos, Triumph, LBI, Success, Plaisance, Cummings Lodge, Diamond, Grove (EBD), Canal No. One, Crane, Cornelia Ida, Anna Catherina, Leonora, Uitvlugt, Meten-Meer-Zorg, Tuschen, Suddie, Anna Regina, Pomeroon, and, of course, all across Georgetown.

I can tell you that the noise generated by Danuta Radzik, Vanda Radzik, Wintress White, Michelle John, Janet Bulkan, Melinda Janki, Simone M. Joly, Alfred Bhulai and the others, is not in sync with the issues and concerns raised by the working class and middle class across this country. What are the key differences you might rightfully ask?

Grassroots Guyanese are concerned with better residential and farm-to-market roads, improvements to schools, street lights, GOAL scholarships, start-up capital either in kind (sewing machines, for instance), or cash grants, improvement of sports facilities, sports equipment, health care access, farming supplies from small things such as cassava sticks to larger requests for tractors and ATVs, and a range of other ‘actionable’ items such as contracts for small operators.

Many are also keen on learning about how to tap into the opportunities availed through the Local Content Act. By contrast, the group of 26 are concerned with a conference that is coming up in Argentina, or one that just wrapped up in British Columbia, Brussels, Geneva, or Washington DC.

Whereas the people of Guyana are keen on how the oil and gas sector will better their lives and that of their children; this group of 26 is bent on shutting down these new sources of livelihoods for the people.

Whereas the people of Guyana are themselves the primary drivers of the choices we should make as a nation and a people, the highfalutin 26 from Danuta Radzik to Simone Joly are pushed or cajoled to conative performance by that all-too-amorphous force called liberal cosmopolitanism.

The anti-government group that signed the letter noted above have free and unencumbered access to the established media in Guyana.

Unlike my letters which are only published once in a blue moon, and only after being cut by as much as 80 per cent, the group of 26 can publish anything, anytime, and practically everywhere.

On the other hand, those like Freddie Kissoon, who are critical of the duplicity of these so-called civil society groups, have been fired, sidelined, and disciplined by those rich families that control the established media houses in Guyana.

In closing, I challenge the signatories to the letter under consideration to publicly affirm their support for the multi-racial ticket of the PPP/C just launched for the June LGEs. I also call on Red Thread and the GHRA for the last time to condemn Ogunseye’s inflammatory racialism.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Randolph Persaud