Paying the Dues: Keeping the Faith

Dear Editor

Thursday, September 19, 2019 was indeed an eventful day of progress and setbacks. We of the PPP and PPP/C are keeping the faith in our Guyanese people and in Guyana: keeping our eyes on creating an ever more prosperous ever brighter future; overcoming and putting our hurt feelings aside, seeking and focusing on paths to keep Guyanese and Guyana whole, through the twists and turns of life.

I will not pretend: unhappy, disappointed and angry we have often been in the way our non-conforming President and non-resigning Cabinet have played things out since December 21, 2018, trying and testing our faith, implicitly daring us on a number of occasions to take it or leave it. But we will persevere in that good fight, carrying on the fight of Cheddi Jagan, Founder of the PAC, the PPP and the PPP/C: Cheddi Jagan that first-generation Guyanese who must have had a large portion of rebellions, revolutionary yet responsible, compromising and constructive nature in his genes; and who has been second to none in sacrificing and paying his dues for his commitment to the people and land to whom he was born.

History records the efforts and sacrifices of Cheddi, and his colleagues in the leadership and membership as a whole, and the lengths to which they went to make the leadership of the PAC and the PPP from their founding in 1946 and 1950 respectively, representative of all of the people of our country. Clearly, Cheddi would have known of the arguments that in an essentially bi-racial society such as ours, with our history, stage of development, and overlapping of significant differences amongst our peoples, it would have been a huge challenge if at all possible, to attract a membership and generate a leadership representative of all of the people of our country. Cheddi accepted that challenge and could never accept that his party, the PPP could ever be looking to win membership from only one race, speak for only one race, advocate for only one race or be concerned about the well-being of only one race, and not for all Guyanese and all Guyana.

Cheddi and the PPP have been paying the price for swimming against the tide, without rancor and bitterness: from the split of 1955, the anti- PPP propaganda from the run up to the 1957 and 1961 elections through our troubled times of 1962, 1963, 1964 and that long period of openly unfair and rigged elections from 1964-1992.

Thus it was that Cheddi and the PPP when free and fair elections once again appeared to be likely, reached out to embrace all Guyanese whatever their history as long as they were not then hostile to the PPP and were willing to work with the PPP, to form the PPP/C. That call has been maintained and being emphasized again and many Guyanese recognizing their past distorted views of the PPP have been finding welcome.

Editor, the leadership of the PNC, PNC/R, APNU and the Coalition are aware of and have been exploiting the paradox, that it is he/she/they who have already given more to something, having more invested in it, who having more to lose are the ones who continue contributing more. We see good returns of the dues that we have been paying. We of the PPP and PPP/C see good reason to be optimistic that the walls of ethnic insecurity are crumbling however slowly, and that more and more our deeds and realistic programmes bringing benefits to all will be rewarded with our peoples’ votes.

To be frank, many of us, not getting what we expected, might be questioning the choice of Chairman of GECOM, but just think that we might have been still today without a Chairman of GECOM; and yes we would have wanted a Chairman who might have more deliberately and precipitously reversed the imposition of that suspicious H2H new registration and thrown it all out. As pointed out by GECOM’s legal adviser, Excellence Dazzell and later acknowledged by the CEO, Mr. Keith Lowenfield that the list of the last LGE in 2018 could have been refreshed and we could have had Elections this October/November. Would that have been the occasion for the disturbances of which our former AG, Basil Williams has been hinting? (Something that should be a matter of regret and not a threat).

Therefore, should it not now be seen that the Leader of the Opposition and General Secretary of the PPP, walking in the footsteps of previous PPP leaders, has been providing Guyana a leadership of growing maturity, responsibility and wisdom?

Mr. President name the date for Elections and let’s get on with it!

Yours sincerely,
Samuel A. A. Hinds
Former President and Former Prime Minister