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The long and winding road to uncertainty
Jan 23, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
No one knows what will become of Guyana in 2013. This country is one of the world’s most enduring territorial tragedies. From the time of self-government at the beginning of the fifties into the year 2013, Guyana has experienced few moments of peace and development.
I am typing this essay a few hours after President Obama was inaugurated and my mind went back to a column done by Mrs. Janet Jagan showering praise on Mr. Obama. I was so enraged that I responded with a commentary on that column. It is stupid of a human being to say that you admire a leader of a country and how he is changing it in fantastic ways and you are the leader of a country too, and barefacedly refuse to emulate the person that you think is showing great qualities.
In that column of mine, I castigated Mrs. Jagan for not getting the PPP to at least attempt to be like Obama. At the time, Mrs. Jagan was still the de facto head of the PPP and maintained enormous power and influence in the running of the Government. If any country needed an Obama at the time when Mrs. Jagan had her power, it was Guyana. From the time the PNC lost power in 1992, an Obama was desperately needed to save this nation.
But Mrs. Jagan had no interest in nurturing an Obama in the PPP or saving Guyana at all. Two Mondays ago in a Stabroek News column, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran wrote that he sees no transformational leader appearing in the future in the PPP. This is bad news. It drives the pessimism we live with deeper into our psyche, and we all dread where the long and winding road that is a country named Guyana will take us.
The year 2013 has not started auspiciously. There isn’t even a remote or faint hint at inclusiveness from the Executive. What will happen to this nation as the shadows of 2013 ebb into history and 2014 beckons is not something any Guyanese can predict. But we can try by using the indicators we see from the dying stages of 2012.
Only someone with his/her head in the sand will say that the PPP is a popular government
that acts democratically and governs this country with lawfulness, moral uprightness and good intention.
No government should be respected when it brings young people into its fold and overnight they build castles and mansions and not one of them has faced a disciplinary hearing. You call this incredible corruption.
Whatever happens in 2013, the signs are just not good. Every effort is being made by the Executive to strip the power of the Legislature through the use of the judiciary. We are entering uncertain waters where the lines between the three constitutional pillars of power, referred to hundreds of years ago as the separation of powers, are being blurred.
Every effort is being made in today’s Guyana to weaken the sacred and longstanding principle of modern democracy that votes count. In Guyana today (and since November 2011), votes don’t seem to count. Votes are being dismissed in a semantic caricature called by the PPP, “the majority of one.”
Since the 2011 general elections, an Executive, a Government and a President have told this nation ‘we are in charge because we were elected’. In the same breath, these same elected jurisdictions behave towards the Parliament as if it was not elected. I have written on this page since that national election that if the Executive cannot accept that the Parliament was elected by a majority of votes, then on what basis have Guyanese accepted the power and legality of the Executive?
So what will happen in 2013? There are the budget talks. What should we make of it? This columnist believes that the invitation to the Opposition Leader by the President does not make sense contextually. It only does if there was a pattern of concessions since the November 2011 elections. Why would the PPP include items on the opposition’s agenda in the budget knowing that the opposition will take credit for the resulting benefits?
A more realpolitik approach is to start the process of generosity on your own so you get the credit yourself. It didn’t happen last year. It will not happen this year. Uncertainty beckons.
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