As one advocate puts it, PS [Power Sharing] will contain racial conflict, note the word contain not resolve, the vagueness is expressed by the same advocate when he says that containing the racial conflict is only one of the potential benefits of power sharing. Here again, I must direct attention to the use of the word ‘potential’ which connotes negativism.

In putting forward what PS may achieve, the advocate adopts some sweeping assumptions, for example, in describing perceived weakness in the present government, he writes “Although the party is ideologically united, its leaders differ in terms of which section of the support base should benefit from government largesse and to what extent the needs and demands of the rival support base should be accommodated”. What assumption for someone who is not privileged to party deliberations? And, further, maybe he can apprise me on the question of governmental largesse.

Guyana faces both a racial problem and a crisis of democracy, says the advocate, and I will not question his particular assumption in this but, I surely wish to pose a question and to ask, that in both race and democracy, is not the escalation to crisis proportion, attributable to anti-nationalist attitude by a leading opposition political personality whose sole aim is to become president of Guyana at any cost?

David deGroot