Both of the major parties have promoted racial division to manipulate their constituencies and must be rejected

realise that we cannot go back to this arrangement - we need a new beginning. This is not an impossibility. There are many options and ideas that we can explore collectively.

Let us ask ourselves why we were put in the position of having to face a return of a Jagdeo-led PPP in the first place. Everything is contextual. To understand the present situation, we must understand the desperation and very real fear that many stakeholders, and in particular the African population, feel about the prospect of a return to a Jagdeo-led PPP regime. It is fact, not opinion, that during their 23 years in power, the PPP turned Guyana into a narco-state, plagued with nepotism and corruption, extra-judicial killings, death squads and political assassinations. More than 400 African men and youth were murdered and many more were declared ‘disappeared’. We witnessed it because we were on the frontlines. The PPP displayed a vulgar racism toward the African population as they constructed an ethnocratic state that was at the time compared to a type of apartheid.

When the coalition came to power, they promised that those who perpetrated these crimes against our humanity would be prosecuted and jailed. They failed to bring any of them to justice. Even Roger Khan was able to return to Guyana and walk free. When the US was deporting him, they asked the ruling coalition if they intended to prosecute him. The response was that no charges would be brought against him.

We must ask ourselves why the coalition broke their promise to deliver justice. Is it because all of them have secrets for each other? Is it because all are involved in the murky web of oppression and deceit and betrayal of we the people that has led us to this tragic and yet inevitable place?

Our only hope is that there are Guyanese with the integrity and courage to stand up and say that enough is enough. Leaders who will call on the people to stop rioting, killing and dying for these political elites on both sides, who are using the people as pawns in their game to control and plunder the resources and wealth of this country. Both the PPP/C and the ruling coalition have used State power to enrich themselves, while the majority of Guyanese of all races continue to live in miserable poverty. Are we willing to fight and die for a continuation of our own oppression and exploitation? Let us use this historical opportunity to liberate ourselves from this absurd dialectic.

As a revolutionary Pan-African organisation, OVP can never promote race hate, despite the fact that folks on both side of the divide are doing just that and calling on us to do so. It is a division that is used to obscure the real struggle that confronts us and can only destroy us in the end.

Innocent people on both sides will get hurt. We have a moral duty to protect the youth of all races from the spread of fake news and rumours that are being used to manipulate them into a situation that will bring about riots, chaos and race war. It is poor youths who will die if such a situation eventuates, and believe me when I tell you that both parties will be willing to sacrifice poor youths in their insatiable lust for power and wealth.

There is nothing to be gained from riots and war and much to lose. The youths of this nation had this nonsense thrust upon them - they do not deserve to become the victims of this falsehood.

In the end, only consciousness, righteousness and the truth can set us free.

Yours faithfully,

Gerald A. Perreira

Leader

Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP)