GTAngler posted:On point. Unless we find a way to get past the race issue we'll be like a dog chasing it's tail. Politicians have to realize that regardless of what your personal feelings are, you need to put them aside in affairs of the country. At the end of the day, go in your room, shut the door and loudly profess your hatred or love for coolie or blackman.
People need to stop blaming politicians for the ethnic problems. These exist because of the day to day lived experience of Guyanese who have hood reason to be skeptical that leadership (in the private as well as public sectors) will be free from ethnic bias.
So they cling to ethnic politics as their safety blanket. Blaming politicians is laziness. All the politicians do is exploit the sentiments that already exist.
It is indeed a fact that neither Burnham nor Cheddi started out seeing themselves as ethnic politicians, and I dont think that they even set about to become that when the split occurred. It was the distrust between the two major groups that led to those men exploiting that opportunity for power that this presented.