Dear Editor,
I wish to reply to a pile of mischief dumped by Randy Persaud in your newspaper of Friday, 9thJuly, 2010 blaming the AFC for the story on the Jagdeo third term which appeared in the Stabroek News, to hide internal problems. I have to ask what is this man “smoking”? The AFC has no arrangement with the Stabroek News or any other media house and get our fair share of licks like everyone else.
After making this most outlandish and un-academic assertion, he then goes on to make the most incredulous claim that I was caught “red-handed” in meetings with the PNC. For a man who is supposed to be an academic, this is frightening. Surely Persaud is aware that as I am leader of an Opposition Party and that there is an ad hoc body known as the Joint Opposition Political Parties (JOPP) and that we do meet and confer from time to time on parliamentary and other national issues such as torture, the regime’s disregard for the rule of law, corruption, improving race relations, and yes, how we can be more effective in the face of a dictatorship. That is our right to meet as the people’s representatives, and neither he, nor any person, can change that fact; even though hard at work to. I have to ask of him, as one of his PPP comrades, and my legal and parliamentary colleague would often ask rhetorically, “What is wrong with that?” Or is he more familiar and comfortable with “Goat ent bite we”?
How come Persaud does not see it fit to say how many times the PPP and PNC meet quietly, or that the AFC has also met with members of the PPP and other parties who are disgruntled and fed up with the regime he is trying to prop up?. Is it only ok for the PPP to meet with the PNC, but not the other opposition parties to do so? Is Randy saying that the PPP and PNC are boyfriend and girlfriend and that nobody else can talk to the PNC? Tell us Mr. Persaud, who gave you Transport over Guyana and its political affairs?
Sincerely,
Raphael Trotman
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