The Ivelaw Griffith interview sickened me to the core
April 4 2019
The dual citizens that made laws for my country and initiated policies for my country have resigned. They should not have been there in the first place. My position on the diaspora working in Guyana has been pellucid and inflexible in the thirty-one years of my newspaper career.
Guyanese who gave their talent and genius to other countries throughout their working career must not occupy positions which locals are qualified for. The qualificational comparison must not be technically misleading. If a local with an ACCA worked for twenty years in the financial sector of Guyana, a person from the diaspora with five more years experience should not get the edge because of the five years difference. The essential criterion when judging the two applicants must be dedicated service to Guyana.
The United States demands that green-card holders must reside within the US for a specific period in each calendar year or have it cancelled. The point is you must service the land that gives you the right and privilege of residency. There are many reasons why I do not support the APNU+AFC regime, will not vote for it, and want it out of majority control of government.
One of these explanations has to do with the appointment of Dr. Ivelaw Griffith as Vice-Chancellor of UG as against Dr. Mark Kirton. The former is an American citizen who lived 30 years out of Guyana before becoming Vice Chancellor; the other is a Guyanese citizen only. Kirton worked for 34 consecutive years as a UG academic. He is of the same age as Griffith and they have the same academic record.
Before he took up his Guyana job, Griffith gave an interview with the Stabroek News in which he waxed lyrical about his thirty years outside of Guyana. I read that interview and I was in a vortex of uncontrollable rage. I contributed four years as a student fighting to make UG a better place and faced immense victimization for my student activism.
I gave 26 years of academic service to UG and again faced colossal oppression, and I opened up the newspapers to read an American citizen will head UG and this citizen is talking about his positive experience of living outside of Guyana for 30 years; mind you, not 30 months. When I read that, Kirton’s image came right in front of me.
A vacancy exists at one of our primary institutions, and a nationalist with only Guyanese citizenship was overlooked for a foreign applicant. To add insult to injury, the next year, the government awarded this gentleman the CCH award while on that very list, Kirton and Adam Harris were given the lesser award of AA. Do our leaders know who Mark Kirton and Adam Harris are, and what they have contributed while living in Guyana? How could I ever support such a jejune, arid, visionless government?
On Sunday afternoon, we saw with graphic evidence how untenable it is to have dual citizens making priceless changes to our country. At an emergency management committee confabulation of the AFC, Dominic Gaskin told his colleagues he will not renounce his British nationality. All Guyanese must probe the mind of Gaskin when he declared that intention.
Simply put, Gaskin was telegraphing his thoughts on the benefits of British citizenship, which he wants while having the privilege of administering the affairs of the Guyanese people. The goodies that come with British status, Gaskin will receive. They include free top class medical treatment and top class university facilities for his children, but this same Gaskin sits in Cabinet and watches as the Georgetown Hospital kills poor citizens and UG offers tenth rate laboratory facilities to our students.
Diaspora Guyanese only want to come back to fill high-paying jobs. We must stop that. Dr. Baytoram Ramharack, who writes nonsense about my country, once told me after applying to UG, the salary that the job carried was one that he couldn’t work for. A Guyanese with a doctorate from Oxford University, Jewel Thomas, is working for that meagre salary right now at UG.
Two other Guyanese who write nonsense about my country from their base in the US are Tarron Khemraj and Sasenarine Singh. Both didn’t come for the 2015 elections, but both requested high-level positions. The nationalist, patriotic thing to have done was to come to Guyana and work your way up to eventually earn those prestigious positions you wanted.
In other words, show that you want to make a contribution to your country by living here. But no! They are writing about my country while refusing to serve it. Maybe when the PPP comes back in power, they will return. The only problem with that is that the PPP ain’t coming back.
Ayoo dese family playing it both side...hey hey hey.