Should David Hinds and Mark Benschop vote for the PPP?
Here is an extract of Mark Benschop’s email to me which I indicated to him I will do a column on; “In conclusion, I ask of you as a friend, someone who is passionate of human rights, a patriot, someone who has given decades in the area of teaching at the University of Guyana, and other services to your country, sometimes under threat to your life and that of your beautiful family under the corrupt and brutal PPP regimes, beaten and locked up, etc. Freddie, in this elections, the only visionary is David A. Granger. He will ensure a better future for your daughter, my son and every other young child, and citizens of Guyana. Surely he’s not perfect, but he has Guyana at heart.”
My other friend David Hinds in his column on me yesterday, wrote; “But unlike Freddie, I do not think those mistakes disqualify them from a second term. Like Freddie, I have difficulties with the way the AFC and WPA behaved in the government and approached the PNC’s desire to treat the government as a one-party formation, but unlike Freddie, I do not believe that those parties are useless. I believe Coalition politics is the route to the desired national solution and national government, and I believe the AFC and WPA are pivotal to pushing the Coalition in that direction.”
Here is a reply to these two friends. First, a preface to my reply. In a column of Sunday, January 13, 2019 headlined “My vote for Granger depends of his action on UG”, I noted; “With the exception of David Granger, this column is openly saying in pellucid language, I trust no one in the ANPU constituents including the WPA to accept defeat with the no-confidence motion and in the next general election. I see the AFC in identical fashion.
“Put another way, I believe with the exception of David Granger, the rest of the leadership in power will not conceded defeat in the next general poll.
“Without Granger, they may be a rigged national election with the input of the power drunk cabal we presently have. This is a dangerous situation facing Guyana and we would need all the courage of Granger to save Guyana. Mr. Granger should be the presidential candidate for APNU. I may be inclined to vote for him. But I have a strong condition attached. UG has deteriorated terribly and is in more troubled times than when the PPP ruled.”
If Mark and David read this, they will see I endorsed Granger. I placed only one criterion before President Granger if I was to vote for him. There were not three, four, five, six requirements just one.
What was taking place at UG with the new Vice Chancellor were bizarre, macabre, destructive, incredibly shocking. No previous president would have tolerated such extraordinary reckless financial waste.
The people who comprised the two unions opposing the Vice Chancellor were not even remotely connected to the PPP. From knowing about them, all were sympathetic to the PNC and only one was Indian who voted for the APNU+AFC in 2015.
Yet the Granger administration stuck with this gentleman and government’s three representatives on the Council voted for renewal of his contract. After that, it was clear to me that Granger and his APNU+AFC colleagues were into incestuous politics, party politics and not the future of Guyana.
Mark and David want the Granger administration to have a second try because they will do better in the second tenure. But where are the signs they will? I confess from the depths of my heart that if these signs could be shown to me, I will vote for APNU+AFC.
I believe that is an impossible task. It has been almost five years of governance that does not auger well for an optimistic future. I am literally fed up with the unscholarly approach to the theory of Guyanese politics espoused by those who support APNU+AFC.
It goes like this – the PPP was evil, the PPP was destructive, the APNU+AFC has not done even one percent of the horrible things the PPP did, it is the better choice to vote for. But if the PPP leaders acknowledge their mistakes to David and Mark and promise they will do better if given another chance, will they vote for the PPP? If not, why?
I agree with the denunciation of the PPP’s semi-fascist rule under Jagdeo and Ramotar but why that automatically makes the APNU+AFC the choice to govern? APNU+AFC have shown that they will not govern democratically. The dangerous signs are there. If David and Mark look carefully, they’ll see them.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)
