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Holi for Guyana

Mar 27, 2013 Editorial

 

Today is Holi in Guyana and the entire country, not just the Hindu adherents, are caught up in the jollity and camaraderie of the spring festival. On Monday, the budget for the country was presented in our National Assembly, but for the moment, the scissors and pruning shears have been put aside. The powder and abeer, not to forget the water, have been taken up instead to douse and smear each other and spread good cheer.
But while merriment and joy are well and good, we might remember the old folk saying that ‘cry does follow laugh’. In our own country we cannot forget that tomorrow life resumes and so will our daily struggle to make that life a better one. And so it is also important to remember that the story behind Holi has to do with the manner in which we, the ordinary citizens, ought to live our lives in the face of leadership that might have become too caught up with their own agenda.
The king, we are told had become very proud and arrogant with his personal accomplishments. Not satisfied with ruling tyrannically and using the people to satisfy his every whim and fancy, he finally declared that he should be worshipped as God. The story is apropos to our Guyanese reality, because we too know to our cost how power goes to the head of rulers. In fact our country’s history is replete with examples of this fatal tendency: its attraction knows no bounds of ideology or party line.
The message for us is that we must be very circumspect when we allocate powers to our leaders. The maxim, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”’ is a good one to keep in mind at all times. There have been trenchant criticisms of the powers of our presidency, enumerated in our constitution, from the moment it was enacted in 1980. It was claimed, with good reasons, that we had created a ‘constitutional dictatorship’. While there were some modifications in 2000, for reasons that have to do with their morbid fascination with power, the major parties left the imperial presidency quite intact. As we celebrate Holi this year, the people of Guyana should keep in mind the inevitable nexus between power and its abuse.
But the story of Holi does not leave us with a feeling of hopelessness that overbearing and tyrannical leaders cannot be challenged. In fact it tells us that the challenge might even come from within the leader’s innermost circle. In the ancient telling of the story, the king’s own son, saw through the pretensions of his father and and he resisted. He did not pick up arms nor did he advocate violence: all he did was to speak truth to power. He began to speak the truth to his own friends and companions – and inevitably word got back to the harsh ruler.
Using every means available, the latter tried to silence the ‘truth-sayer’ but to no avail. And this is the second lesson for us. No matter how close one may be to the arrogant and authoritarian leader, if one points out his excesses, one becomes ‘the enemy’ and silencing will be sought ‘by any means necessary’. Today, in all the major parties, we have seen the expulsions and banishments that accompany criticisms of ‘creeping’ or ‘existent’ dictatorship from within.
But if one is convinced that truth will eventually triumph, the final message of Holi is that one must continue to speak truth to power. And in the end the edifice of tyranny will come crumbling and tumbling down. A false leader may fool some of the people all the time; all of the people some of the time but never all of the people all of the time.
So tomorrow, after we have put away the water and the powder and the abeer, let us not forget the message of Holi. It is a message that is relevant for all times for all places. Man is irretrievably flawed and his power must be always circumscribed.

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