OUR OPEN LETTER TO GRANGER

Dear Sir,

When you decided to run on the incumbent ticket and as the Presidential Candidate, hundreds of thousands of us selfishly breathed a sigh of relief because we felt you were potentially challenging your health but knew yours was the only candidacy that would have garnished the support to go against the Opposition that had begun its tenure fearful of your presence.

Their walk out routine from Parliamentary sessions, though not unexpected, gave reaffirmation of having made the smart choice to those who voted Coalition, for the PPP was not there to work for the people but to work for their Party and its members who are largely of one and not representative of the quilt of our six races.

It’s necessary to say all this because it is important to recall why you were elected and NOT BY MERCURY PUBLIC AFFAIRS – the disreputable rigging machine employed by seedy politicians at home and abroad- but by the people who are brimming with hope for a future for the country they will forever call home.

That said, we expect every decision you make as President not to be a unilateral or narrowly assented to conclusion but one that is made with us, your constituents within local and extended borders, firmly in mind.

We all want the best for Guyana and continue to toil for that outcome but are disconcerted by some of the possibilities being floated around.

Jagdeo is a thug, in and out of his political costume and we hope that you know this.

So, the idea of even contemplating shared Governance with a thug doesn’t only fly in the face of reasonable and comprehensive rationale but sounds like a ransom payment.  

We understand the concept of magnanimity but being noble to the ignoble is, Sir, an oxymoron…and with potentially disruptive outcomes.

Word is, he has in good- faith deference declared that the Coalition could run the entire Government and he will run the Treasury. We know these things can be tall tales but with collective Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from the last time he held the keys to the Treasury, we expect you to be especially guarded against this.

No need to detail for you the social and economic outcomes of the PPP 23 year Mal Administration but we implore you to use that as a yard stick to establish any and all parameters for talking Government with them.

I’ll add, to that, their emboldened attacks on people of African descent and its use as a clarion call on all of their media to exclude and disenfranchise these members of society.

The Constitution that they hollowed out and reshaped for PPP dynasty would be a nuclear weapon in their hands now.

And, if the way our Aluminum, Mineral Wealth, Logging industries that were run with negative returns to national GDP is any indication of how our biggest boon yet, OIL, will be controlled by a set of thugs posing as Politicians,

– a look at overall returns and growth paints the bleak picture-

we are anticipating that you will see this too and understand why we expect you to protect us from these Mal Administrators who routinely took the wrong turn while transporting our funds to the National Treasury.

We’ve noted that Jagdeo has assembled a Chorus Line of Sanctions Singers and suspect that their warnings of impending sanctions IF JAGDEO DOES NOT GET HIS WAY – are intended to beat you in to submission.

We expect you not to be rattled by this school –yard bully ‘showing you cuff’ through men, who have now devalued their currency by siding with this universally known and documented charlatan, under whom extra judicial killings were a matter of course for his Ministry of Home Affairs.

Instead, we expect you to call the threats the trash that they are and the shakedown that they represent.

We are already calling them that.

You have Ministers or Officers within the Coalition whose wheel house is Foreign Matters and the mechanics of the Sanctions process. Utilize their expertise and feel free to seek ours. We, too, can help in this area.

The point to note is that sanctions can only be justified if you have violated a specific policy of the country or entity providing economic largesse.

We would submit

– just to highlight the hypocrisy of its threat and supporting chorus line of sanction singers-

that sanctions were not issued against Janet, Court- declared illegal President and Jagdeo, illegal because he was appointed by an illegal President, nor were sanctions issued when Jagdeo was running a country that became the focal point of the US Drug Enforcement Agency, or when Roger Khan of internationally most- wanted fame, was a boost to his economy.

Maybe the Opposition didn’t push for it. But, the fact that all the countries now being hinted at as sanctioning bodies are countries that sat through Jagdeo’s Thugocracy and never offered Sanctioning is a serious challenge to the policy behind the penalty or punishment…as it is to the efficacy of the local chorus line now singing sanctions.

So, you have our thoughts ..albeit in broad swaths.. but unmistakingly what is expected of you.

We’re disgusted that the democracy, innate in casting one’s vote to select one’s leader, has been disrupted and derailed by the Party that feels Government is its Birthright and the Treasury its Inheritance.

We know that their intention is to establish a crisis of confidence in the incumbent Administration and, truth be told, we have not been too thrilled with how this incumbent Coalition has relegated itself to the political counterpunch.

But we are Patriots and see the party merely as a vehicle to transport our contribution to effect national improvement.

We, too, are political hijackers- but of the kind that fights for national advancement and respect for our six peoples, that will back candidates who will serve us and not themselves or their constricted visions, will stand on the principles they campaigned on and not those that become convenient and will not desecrate the office with the nepotism, curry favor or the battery of blunders that have plagued previous Administrations… which all brought us here, to this combustion point.

The flaw at the heart of where we are now is entitlement…which is how the PPP ruled after Cheddi’s election, his bequeathement to his wife and her appointment of his namesake to our Presidency – all in flagrant violation of the Constitution.

And this round robin of court battles to demand what the law says is unlawful- taking away GECOM’S right to declare elections– stinks of entitlement, buttressed by lawlessness.  

So, in the spirit of all of the Biblical extractions and references made by the Chorus Line Critics and Sanctions Singers supporting Jagdeo, I’ll extract this.

Moses circled the Mountain for 40 years and was not allowed in to the Promised Land because he showed frustration.

Aaron, Moses’ successor, was denied entrance to the Promised Land for lack of faith. 

Joshua was finally the one who met all the requirements of his God and entered the Promised Land bringing God’s people with him.

After 54 years of Post Independence poverty and devilish disenfranchisement, this is now our Joshua moment and we look forward to walking behind you into a new day, with the expectation of you never forgetting why you are walking ahead of us, with the anticipation of you constantly glancing back to make sure that we are still behind you and are comfortable with the path you are clearing ahead for us to safely tread.

We will walk on the principles you have campaigned on, your pledge to eliminate the practitioners of conduct- unbecoming that remains cankerous in Governments. We will walk behind your pledge to take Guyana to its Zenith, always carving a path for our children to walk behind us too.

We are grateful that you have taken on this fight, have stayed in the race and will protect our patrimony from the talons of the vultures perched up in the eaves.

And we shall protect you from behind, as you take us forward, for the Protector was built for the Protected and vice versa.

Now on to the swearing in….for, too long, it has been the Beelzebub Show.