Dear Editor,
Mr Aubrey Reteymer authored an utterly puerile letter on September 23, 2026, under the caption “The President’s One Guyana initiative is a sham.”
Mr Reteymer is, of course, entitled to his opinion, but to express it in a letter to the press which, from the first to the last words of the letter, seeks to dam the President, absence of a single sentence of evidence to support what he writes, is utterly disgraceful.
Reteymer, for instance, accuses the President of attempting to change the National Motto, “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.” The President has done no such thing. “One Guyana” reinforces the national motto; it is not an alternative objective.
He accuses the governing party of being “discriminatory, racist, and corrupt”, without offering one single example to support this ugly claim.
Mr Reteymer accuses the President of hoodwinking (my term) the international community by presenting a false image of our country. If that is the case, why are international investors falling over themselves to invest in our country?
If that is the case, why are Guyanese, who once fled a desperately divided and once struggling country, now anxious to return to and retire in the country of their birth?
If we have a Government guilty of “exclusion of Afro and Amerindian Guyanese” as claimed by Reteymer, can he explain the fact that the 27-member Cabinet includes 10 Guyanese who are not of Indian descent, one of whom is the Prime Minister, another, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, another, the Minister of Home Affairs, and another, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, all of which are the most critical and powerful positions in the Cabinet?
How, too, does Reteymer explain the fact that Guyana has nominated an Indigenous Guyanese, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, to be the Secretary General of the United Nations?
Reteymer pulls a statistic out of the air and claims that “97 percent of all Government contracts are awarded to family and friends of the President, cabinet members and supporters of the PPP” without offering a scintilla of evidence to support this ridiculous accusation.
I have had the privilege, over my life, of having worked directly with seven of our 10 presidents, and I can attest to the fact that, though all of them have been wedded, none of them have been more focused and genuinely dedicated to the imperative of uniting our country than President Irfaan Ali.