Academics like Jeffrey created the 1980 constitution he now rails about

Phillip Bynoe: HENRY Jeffery can be assured that my understanding of Guyana, its history, politics and political economy is delicate enough to allow me to examine and interpret the impact that people like him and his “sub-class” have had on our nation’s development and its peoples. He is also fortunate that I am not a student of his at the institution to which he fled to seek refuge and live out what is left of his academic and political careers or I would have led a successful revolt against him at the University of Guyana both as a lecturer and as a defunct politician who should not be allowed to use our premier academic institution to bamboozle and distort the young minds of our nation – you have done enough Henry!
Jeffery’s pronouncement that I “lack a sufficiently nuanced understanding of the subject on which I seek to comment” and his school teacher like correction of my use of “West Minister” as against “Westminster” are atypical of his sub-class – they always thumb their noses at and demonstrate a deep disrespect for people who they consider not to be of their “academic standing” - (whatever that means). One can discern their barely disguised contempt in much of what they write and how they speak. They fail to accept that even the language which we use to communicate is changing. Our youngsters today are changing even the way we spell. I say this not to explain away my own mistake (which indeed it was) but to make the point that it was academics like Jeffery and others who not only created the 1980 constitution which entrenched the “West Minister” style government and controls our elections, but they also revised it and voted for this revision in parliament (do you remember Henry?) in the mid 1990s. So Henry you were involved in the making of our current constitution and the changing of it, both times on the side of the government of the day, PNC and PPP, so clearly it has to be ideal for you. You are hypocritical and politically dishonest in taking the stand that you are taking now against the efficacy of the current constitution.
Today all of our government institutions, all of our political organisations and actions, the way state controlled resources are managed and distributed and by whom flow from this constitution. I am in a better position to regale against it, to want to change it, to mobilise and organise against it. I never supported it, I never voted for it in parliament nor in a referendum, never sang its praises – I just simply accepted it like so many other Guyanese. So how am I to judge you when you now tell me and the country that this same constitution is the cause of all our problems in Guyana; that the opposition in Guyana and others are against it? How can you now regale me about its structural and other imperfections? When you, personally, along with the people who now make up the current opposition, in fact conceived it, wrote it, advocated it, voted for it and promulgated it? Is it any wonder Henry, that ordinary people like me are of the view that it is the academics and intellectuals, people with letters in front of and behind their names like you who screwed Guyana up? Read more.........