NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN GUYANESE POLITICS

Sep 01, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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One of the reasons why Guyana is not fulfilling her potential more quickly is that an inordinate amount of time is spent on minor political squabbles. For a small country, we sure do spend far too much time on turning minor issues into major political storms.
These storms cause damage and require efforts to repair the damage. And this takes away from the process of national development.
Almost every place you go there is some form of political discussion taking place. Every day in the newspapers there is some criticism or comment, or support for some political action.
Even if you go to a wedding house, invariably the conversation turns to some issue about local politics. You go to barber shops and there is some political discussion. Somebody always has something to say about politics in Guyana.
If half of the time spent in belabouring politics could be dedicated towards personal development, a great many persons would have been better off today.
But the highly politicized nature of our society does provide a great deal of humour at times. Take for example the present issue involving the call for the former leader of The United Force, Mr. Manzoor Nadir, to demit his seat in parliament. Now what could be more amusing than this call?
The life of this parliament is about to end. Parliament is in recess. When it resumes it is going to be dissolved so that elections can be held.
So why would the leader of The United Force at this most unholy hour be bothered about asking the party’s former leader to demit his seat? What useful purpose is that call going to serve? What benefit, even symbolic, is it going to serve The United Force to ask Nadir to demit his seat when parliament is in recess and is soon to be dissolved?
Within the next few months, The United Force will have to convince the electorate that it should be given a seat in the National Assembly. If at the last hour there is squabbling about its representation over the past five years, how is the party going to convince its supporters to continue to throw their support behind the party?
The only thing that such a call does is to portray The United Force as divided. That is all it does. And this surely cannot be good for the party at this time.
The party, of course, is free to arrive at a position that Nadir has not properly represented its interests in parliament. But for every such view there are bound to be more than a few others who will argue that, in fact, Nadir has been a capable representative, and while Minister of Trade was a shining star, so much so that the ruling party became concerned that he was outshining some of its own ministers and this forced him to be asked to assume the labour portfolio.
The PPP were not keen on having the leader of the country’s foremost capitalist party outshine its ministers and therefore sought to relegate him to the labour ministry where he has continued to do an excellent job in providing training for young people.
Nadir is a capitalist and he has essentially brought capitalism into the government. The country is now more capitalist than it ever was. There is a strong and influential private sector in the country. This is something that The United Force should want to associate itself with, rather than distance itself from, as it goes into the next elections. But in Guyana, strange things happen in politics.
The next strange development is a group of protestors picketing outside State House over charges leveled against a youth who allegedly showed his middle finger in public. Now those protesting seem to be misinformed and certainly they have the wrong venue.
Why protest in front of the President’s House? Is the President the person responsible for filing the charges against the young man? Criminal charges are charges filed by the State and any offence is an offence against society and not against the President, so those demonstrating against the charges need to ascertain who the virtual complainant is and then decide whether they wish to protest.
One has to ask, though… Suppose it was a private citizen who was shown the middle finger and whose complaint would have been responsible for the charges, would those persons who were outside State House with their pickets be on the picket line? And what example are these persons setting when they are photographed gesticulating with their middle fingers? Let us be serious about the way we do things. What sort of example are they setting to our young children who pass and see these things?
These two issues are going to generate heated and extended debate throughout Guyana, and all that time and energy perhaps would have been better spent tending to our kitchen gardens and producing something more worthwhile that would enhance our personal lives, rather than creating mini political storms.

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