By Former President, Donald Ramotar

THE sinking of the MV Barima and the deaths of so many of our fellow Guyanese is one of the most tragic and traumatic events in our history.
Everyone felt the pain and suffering. I have seen people who had no personal connection with anyone on board, openly shedding tears.
The government has been doing everything, humanly and practically possible to help ease the suffering of the families and those closely connected with who were on board the vessel at the time the tragedy occurred. President Ali has been leading in these efforts himself. At every level they have made themselves available to the families of those who perished in the tragedy.
Unfortunately, our politics has sunk to possibly its lowest level ever. The opposition has only seen this as an occasion to gain cheap political mileage, and has been attacking government ministers, personally and relentlessly.
This was manifested in the first sitting of the National Assembly on July 27. That sitting, I anticipated, would have been a very solemn occasion. At the highest forum in our land, we would have thought that families of the deceased would have felt the love and solidarity of the entire nation, coming together through their political leaders in expressions of condolences.
It could have been an occasion to let the families and survivors know that they were not alone in their time of grief, and everyone in Guyana and the diaspora were sharing their pain. That would have been a source of great comfort to all Guyanese
Unfortunately, the behaviour of the opposition was nothing short of hooliganism and thuggery. They saw it as an occasion to cast blame and hurl accusations. They seemed totally uninterested in trying to ease the terrible loss of the families, and instead to extract whatever political mileage they could make from the people’s grief.
They could have used the sitting to demonstrate that they could rise above just “cheap political hustling”. It would have shown that they could be stateswomen and statesmen.
They could have used the time to prepare their case to present to the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) which the government announced it is setting up.
The behaviour of the combined opposition in a way demonstrated a disregard for those who died and the survivors who must be terribly traumatised.
I remember another traumatic event in the life of our country and the dignified way our opposition behaved then. I refer to the Jonestown Massacre which took place in the North West on November 18, 1978 almost 48 years ago. True, most of those who died were US citizens, but more than that they were our fellow human beings and the then opposition parties conducted themselves in a way that reflected the emotions of our people and appropriate respect for the victims and their surviving loved ones. The opposition then treated the occasion with dignity, solemnity and respect that it warranted.
Yes, the opposition would have lots of questions, but they exhibited a callous disregard for the dead and for their grieving families when the National Assembly met for the first time after the tragic and unfortunate incident.