The Coalition government and reducing fear among Guyanese

May 26, 2015 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
All societies are constructed and therefore can be deconstructed and reconstructed. I think that the new APNU+AFC government has an excellent opportunity to deconstruct many aspects of the Guyanese society and reconstruct a more cohesive, inclusive and productive society.
Societies are made up of systems, structures, institutions and individuals. Hence the very construct of the Guyanese society based on these elements distinguishes it from other societies.
As this new government aspires to be a government of national unity, for all the people of Guyana and to work towards achieving our seemingly elusive goal of ‘one people, one nation, one destiny’, much reconstruction is needed.
An important point to note is that institutions and organizations are living entities, thus the systems and structures which define these entities are critical to the achievement of the goals of the new administration.
The Guyanese society is like a complete piece of clothing. The systems, structures and institutions are the pieces of materials which are sewn together to form the one piece of clothing. I therefore call the experts, specialists and strategists; the tailors and seamstresses who would determine which systems and structures are appropriate to develop policies and strategies for implementation.
Hence critical for the new administration in its quest to reconstruct Guyana, is to harness not only the experts and strategists but the thinkers, I call the thinkers, the weavers. The thinkers are creative and innovative in weaving not just the systems and the structures, but the ideology or philosophy from which the systems and structures are developed. The principles upon which the Guyanese society will be constructed, has to be woven into the systems and structures which would now determine policy development and define institutions and organizations.
Here is a subtle case of how a policy promotes discrimination either knowingly or unknowingly. Recently, I was doing an online Check-In for an international flight and was assisted by a Caucasian European colleague. My colleague accessed the website for the Airline and we proceeded with the Check-In process. Somewhere during the process while I was entering the information requested, my colleague said, ‘why are they asking you all of those questions, they did not ask me all of those questions?’ My response was, ‘are you sure we are on the right website? My colleague said ‘yes, it is the same site I used earlier’. My response to my colleague was, ‘don’t worry; they do this to us all of the time’. Meaning that, we are discriminated against in this way all the time. My colleague responded ‘but I don’t like it, it is not right’.
The point to note here is that this international Airline has a policy for persons from various countries on how to Check-In online for their flights. If I was not going through that process with my Caucasian European colleague, I would not have known that I was being discriminated against; I would have thought that the information required was generally what was requested by all passengers of this Airline.
The question here to be addressed is ‘while Guyana has a certain international characterization that is relevant for more significant development and security purposes, is there a limit to which that characterization should be used? Should a passenger because they are from a particular country be discriminated against for something as simple an on-line Check-In process for a flight? I guess the United Nations still has a lot of work to do to reduce the gap in discrimination.
Nevertheless, back to the substantive topic for this letter; the reason I gave that example is to show how policies can be developed and implemented with biases and sometimes neither the implementer nor the beneficiaries are aware of these biases.
I believe that in our attempts to find solutions to  issues  such as race and ethnicity, trust or the lack of it and the seeming apathy as a people, we have to dig deep and be honest and truthful in our examination, determination and exploration of solutions to those issues.
In Freddie Kissoon’s column in the Kaieteur News of 28 April, 2015, titled ‘When does the past begin?’ He made a very interesting statement that I find is worthwhile repeating in our analysis of the fears among various groups in our society and building trust. He stated that ‘Thousands of Guyanese East Indians in “Little Berbice” in New York have hopes that their loved ones will join them in New York even if the US and New York have permanent Black leadership. But they will remain fanatically tied to the PPP because their tribe is in power in Guyana and they want the PPP to continue to dominate the other ethnicities”.
A major question here is, why do East Indian Guyanese have no problem with black leadership in New York and the US and would have a problem with black leadership in Guyana? A key factor here is trust. Do East Indian Guyanese trust black Guyanese and do black Guyanese trust East Indian Guyanese? The answer is to a large extent no, hence trust is a major factor
Similarly, in a letter published in the Stabroek News on 7 May, 2015 by one Dr. Baytoram Ramharack titled ‘Though not ideal, the PPP represents the best choice for Indians’, he stated the following,‘ Suspicions among Indians are fuelled by the continued refusal of the PNC (APNU) to confront its past transgressions, and, in the absence of leadership and organizations that sincerely and frontally advocate for Indians in our plural society, the PPP, though not the ideal, represents the best choice for Indians. Most Indians will hold their noses and look beyond the corruption issue, as they ask themselves which party best represents their security and political interests’.
Everything we do as human beings is motivated either by the emotion of love or the emotion of fear. Is Dr. Rambarack saying that East Indians love the PPP so much that they would support the party although it is not ideal? Or is it that they fear that if they don’t, their security and political interests would not be represented adequately by others? Here again the issue of trust has arisen.
Trust in this context is at two levels; the individual and institutional. The East Indian Guyanese in New York trust that the leadership and organizations will protect their security and other interests. The trust is in the systems, hence the black leadership per se, is not an object of fear.
Fear is associated with an object or event. The question here is what are the objects or events that make East Indian Guyanese fearful?
The reconciliation process, therefore, should determine what are the objects and events in Guyana’s history that stimulate the emotion of fear in both East Indian and African Guyanese. Reducing that fear would require that the process also focus on assurances that these objects and events would not reoccur. This is fundamental for building trust.
Thus the point earlier of the need for the thinkers/weavers to design policies, strategies and programmes that would ensure such reoccurrences does not happen.
The forgiveness aspect of the reconciliation process could therefore focus on both the PPP/C and the PNC from an organization standpoint expressing regrets for the events which occurred during the periods when their administration was in government and which have become objects of fear in the Guyanese society.
Audreyanna Thomas

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