Please, Sir, I ask that you allow me through your respected columns to make public the following letter to my party leader and friend, Mr. Robert Corbin.
My Dear Robert,
FOR some weeks now, it seems that the only thing you have done concern Gajraj and the phantom gang affair. As I believe it has been designed, you seem to have now settled on the issue of the revocation of his visas as enough reason for the Minister's resignation, and the hope for a subsequent bringing down of the Government. (Indeed, I have to agree that the unexplained revocation of the Ministers' visa is perhaps the only thing that has given substance to this entire episode that has consumed you in the last month.)
But while I appreciate that you will always be the one responsible for the decisions you make, as your friend, and an old head who has watched the Americans work, I want to give you a piece of advice:
Firstly I want to ask you, without expecting an answer, whether you in your honest self did not find the visa revocations a little strange, and if you did, have you pondered over what might have been the real purpose and aim?
Let me suppose that for a moment you know these things, then, I want to more importantly ask: Have you given any serious thought to your own position and the position of people like me who support you, in any envisaged future dispensation concerning governance and power in Guyana?
Have you also given any thought to the possibility that you were set up to expend your energies in one direction while many 'Chalabies' (a la Iraq) are being nurtured and guided to undermine and replace you?
Be careful, Herman, for by all means I hope that you do not live to regret anything in relation to your current actions. If you may, there are a few things that I feel compelled to tell and ask of you in the hope that it might set you thinking more soberly about our future. Yes, our future, both yours and mine.
On Friday 13th of February, an educationist and senior party member visited a certain embassy. He left at about 10 a.m. and a little while after a lawyer, also a senior member of the Party, visited the same mission, leaving after lunch time. (I can send you the related tapes if you wish.) Are you aware of these visits and if you are, do you think honestly that you are aware of every thing that was discussed and with whom?
At the time when Mr. Felix (to whom I offer my congratulations) was
being sworn in and you were protesting, were you aware that another meeting was going on between some senior Party members and two officials from a foreign mission? While I know that you might be aware of the occurrence of these meetings, I am worried as to why you, Robert, were not there.
Have you really given any thought as to the desires and implications of the covert links being fostered between some attorneys-at-law from both our party and the PPP and other 'wannabee' brokers from civil society who are having their images tailored for better while you make yours for worse?
Are you aware of any significant external financing to a newspaper and
a television station, and if so have you asked yourself whether any of these media houses are really sympathetic towards you and the black people like me who support you?
Do you honestly feel that decent and upright black people (who are the
majority of the Afro Guyanese population) are not happy that the crime wave has been suppressed and that your attack on Gajraj, McDonald and the Police Force is not counter productive, time wasting and self destructive? Do you not think, too, that your apparent 'demigod making' status of Felix can in turn help to destroy him and the Police Force and even make people wonder about the level of support he gave to McDonald during the time when policemen were being killed left, right and center?
How do you think that ordinary black people feel about George Bacchus
(who I think should have been in jail by now) implicating Ashton King and others in murder that from all appearances so far they did not commit. (Watch out, Robert, the sentiments here have the real potential of a backfire.)
What do you believe Indians feel? Are you not of the opinion that the PPP has cashed in on the situation and exploited the sentiment of its supporters on the Gajraj issue to expel Ramjattan, since it was widely known that he, Ramjattan, was having problems with the PPP and facing sanctions before the Gajraj matter? And lastly for now, how do you think the member countries of CARICOM view the action of the Americans in this specific matter, taken against the background of what has been happening in Haiti where 7.5 million black people live, and the American response to that situation?
I remember those sections of the Readers Digest titled "Points to Ponder" that you used to like to read so much. I have tried here to give you some real pertinent ones, but as I said, be careful, my son, that you have not been 'condemned' already, and that was not your last breakfast at the State Department.
Please continue to count on my best regards.
Thank you Mr. Editor.
Yours faithfully
Insider