An Integrative Nation

Jan 27, 2013 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

Opposition Leader David Granger

The PNCR column this week presents an edited version of the address by Brigadier David Granger, Leader of the Opposition on the Motion to Establish a National Commemoration Commission that was passed by the National Assembly on Friday 25th January 2013.

The sight of scores of Amerindians protesting in front of the National Assembly in April 1997 was unforgettable. Three organisations – the Amerindian People’s Association, the Guyana Organisation of Indigenous Peoples and The Amerindian Action Movement of Guyana – congregated there to express their opposition to what they perceived to be an affront to their dignity.
Their entreaties were ignored and our International Airport – first named in homage to our first people – was renamed to honour a single person. The Timehri International Airport (Change of Name) Act of 1997 was assented to subsequently.
The Public Holidays Act was amended to designate a particular day as ‘Arrival Day.’
The decision to make the change was greeted with silent disapprobation by those persons who knew that their forebears had arrived on different dates. The request by some Indigenous people for a separate holiday to be observed as ‘Heritage Day’ in September, similarly, was denied.
The sight of scores of African-Guyanese, more recently, protesting against the proposed erection of a monument near to the seawall, was yet another indication of an administrative misstep. It suggests that decision-makers once again might have failed to fathom fully the feelings of persons who feel offended by the action being taken. The lessons of earlier cultural blunders seem not to have been learnt.
The controversies surrounding the renaming of the airport, the creation of new national holidays and the erection of the monument are not meant to be a measure of the merit of the arguments, or of the rights, of the respective ethnic groups.
They arose out of the absence of a clearly-defined and publicly-known national cultural policy. They could have been avoided by a more inclusionary approach to governance and a fervent commitment to national unity.
The advantage of an inclusionary approach is inestimable. That was the approach taken by the former National History and Arts Council which, within a year of Independence in 1967, devised new national holidays to observe the Hindu festivals of Phagwah and Diwali and the Islamic festivals of Eid-ul-Adha and Youman Nabi in addition to the existing Christian festivals of Easter and Christmas. These measures have remained essentially undisturbed for decades.
Attempts to resolve questions of culture and identity by majority decision or, worse, by minority decree, could have costly and unanticipated consequences. There can be only one majority, but there are many minorities.
Discrimination diminishes our humanity and erodes national unity. Bruises, small at first, fester to degenerate into gangrenous abscesses. A single spark of resentment can become a raging inferno of hatred which can take a generation to extinguish. People may love in haste but they hate at leisure.
Guyana is made up, largely, of the descendants of migrants from other continents. The National Assembly has an obligation to provide the leadership to unite our peoples. It has a duty to prevent the deliberate falsification of facts or the invention of a version of history that venerates one group while it vituperates another.
It must forestall any folly that might prolong the nightmare of insecurity and disunity or that can lead us down the path of deeper distrust and disorder.
Our identity is the single most important factor in national integration. Our identity reinforces our sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self-confidence. Our identity determines whether we want Guyana to be merely a geographical expression or to evolve into a community of people working together for our common good.
The Constitution of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana is our supreme law. It declares, at Article 35, that “The state honours and respects the diverse cultural strains which enrich [the] society and will seek constantly to promote national appreciation of them at all levels and to develop out of them a socialist national culture for Guyana.”
Culture is made up of the ideas, customs and practices that are passed on from parents to their progeny. Culture is learned from the stories that elders and parents retell to their children – in the home, the mandir, the masjid, the church and the school.
Culture is also learned through information and, sometimes, misinformation, purveyed by the government, especially one that most menacingly, controls major television, radio and print media.
Guyana needs a cultural policy in order to explain that our heritage is fundamental to our identity as a nation and to our success as a society. That policy must be based on an understanding that an integrative nation fosters an inclusive society and a confident citizenry.
No one benefits from the absence of a national cultural policy. Doling out dollops of cash to one or two ethnic groups one or two times a year is not a clear articulation of a coherent cultural policy.
Public money must serve the public good. It should be expended to ensure equity, to educate everyone and to establish standards of excellence in the arts. It must enrich our national heritage by making it easy for everyone to be exposed to work that encourages integration, enhances our solidarity, energises the young, and enriches the quality of human life.
The National Assembly, for these reasons, is urged to establish a National Commemoration Commission that is inclusionary in its composition and is integrative in its ideology. Such a Commission must be charged with the responsibility for making recommendations for the promulgation of a National Cultural Policy which, in the words of our Constitution, “honours and respects the diverse cultural strains which enrich [the] society and will seek constantly to promote national appreciation of them at all levels.”
Let us not sleepwalk into separateness. Let us take this opportunity to promote national unity. Let us look forward to enjoying a good life, together, in this land of our birth.