Dear Editor,
IT’S cricket, lovely cricket, cavalier, calypso and carnival type, with the crackling, crashing and crunching sounds of the bat and ball, bowlers belaboring with the ball, batters blasting the bouncing ball and fielders blowing breathlessly from bounding after the battered ball at blazing, break-neck speed. Jadeja’s blessed six and four off the last two bewildered deliveries from the broken Gujarat bowler, helped M.S. Dhoni’s Chennai Cricket Team to win their fifth Indian Premier League (IPL) title.

Yes, Guyanese and West Indians love cricket and…. politics, two best topics for those in the tropics to ingest as a tonic, being chronic to pathetic behaviour from patriotic events while becoming experts at discussing without any logic, micro and macroeconomic issues regardless of our biologic and socioeconomic portfolio. Becoming hypnotic in society with exotic attitudes, many become myopic to pass as a comic and not due to any optic vision. With a symbolic reason while not due to fun and frolic, we become philosophic as an automatic reaction, some trespass on the stage of an alcoholic, others with the taste for narcotic.

They say cricket used to be a “gentleman’s game” but now it’s a “gambling game,” while politics used to be a “diplomatic game” but now it’s a “dirty game.” Mixing and matching clairvoyant cricket with partisan politics, the desultorily PNC Party has been bowled, missing the ball, or, caught behind by a thin edge, being forced to play defensively on the back foot, not affording to chance forwarding aggressively on the front foot, from an ardent attack spearheaded by a dogged PPP/C Party.

The PNC Party has been outsmarted by the PPP/C’s foresight and beaten by their own hindsight. They have crumbled like a pack of cards under their own lightweight and left to wonder aimlessly without proper direction and poor guidance. Their captain does not understand the game, nor does he know the rules and is feverishly trying to control his aggrieved players who are more bent on throwing in the towel and abandoning ship rather than row as a synchronised team. Will there be a show of “Mutiny on the Bounty?”

Players need to trust their captain otherwise they will rebel and will refuse to comply with the head. Thus, non-co-operation breathes contempt and the booty at stake will be lost. V.P. Dr. Bharat Jagdeo has echoed that the PNC party is shattered with internal problems and the members appear to have no faith in their leader, Norton. The Opposition Leader continues to throw away the game with his incessant ramblings. The V.P. remarked, “How can one expect an Opposition Leader of a country to be truly involved in policymaking if they are making “far-fetched” assertions while being aware of the facts.”

The PNC party is not only losing members to the PPP/C party but also, that party is losing grounds to the court. In a matter of 24 hours within the week, that party has seen two cases thrown out by the High Court. The Chief Justice, Roxane George dismissed two court challenges filed by the camouflaged PNC party. The first case regarded the process involved in compiling the Voters’ List and the second case contested the demarcation of boundaries. The CJ had solid reasons to rebuff that party’s attempt to delay the Local Government Elections. PNC’s fallacies continue to be exposed and their shameless behaviour are being ridiculed. “The applicant must have known that what she was producing to the court is unreliable evidence…There is no credible evidence before this court of ineligible persons being listed in the “Register of Voters,” the CJ pointed out. Who in their right mind would support and vote for a party determined to lie, fool, cheat, rob, deceive, steal, hoodwink and practice dishonesty in every aspect of their operation in order to gain power at any cost?

The PNC party is sweating bullets in an air-conditioned environment because they realise that the public is seeing through their make-ups. They are being undressed in the streets wearing their fine lingerie of “nothingness.” They are being shunned because of their infamous claim to the reverse of the “Midas Touch.” Being full of empty barrels, all they succeed in doing is making a whole lot of senseless noise. The loyalty of the PNC party lies in the realm of unscrupulousness, skullduggery, untruthfulness and distrust.

Imagine the claim of ‘Apartheid’ in Guyana? How more comical can they be unless they are challenging “The Three Stooges” for their role! If they tried to hide US$18 million, imagine if they were handling the billions of oil revenue what would have happened! A walk down the lane with the PAC during the years of the last administration is giving the Auditor General sleepless nights.

Accountability and transparency, honesty and integrity, trust and faith, belief and sincerity, these are blasphemous words in the PNC’s vocabulary! Let’s not even revisit the lopsided Exxon Mobil oil contract signed by those who boast and brag that they can look out for the interest of Guyanese and they can protect the wealth of Guyana! While they escape unscathed in the dark of the night, they have the audacity to blame the current administration for all their wrong doings.

The PNC party was a “no show” at the signing of the first code of conduct for the LGEs. That speaks volume. They are unprepared to comply with the simplicity of decency. Any party who cannot partake in the LGEs in contesting all the constituencies in their entirety has automatically lost the right to speak on behalf of all Guyanese.

At the NY Permanent Forum of People of African Descent, Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce, Honorable Oneidge Walrond, summed it well when she declared on behalf of the PPP/C Government, “Guyana is a multi-ethnic society striving to forge unity and harmony amongst our diverse peoples. We will, therefore, continue to support the work of this Forum, including the elaboration of a political declaration on People of African Descent.”

The PPP/C Party plays cricket, not politics. Only the PPP/C party can truly represent all of Guyana.

Yours respectfully,
Jai Lall.