Leaders influence ordinary men and women

Feb 18, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Rewind the tape to two months ago; the very American border officials that are harassing Canadians crossing into the US were not doing that. Two months ago what we had was the opposite position – American immigration at US borders were not manhandling visitors, questioning them for hours and refusing them entry. They have not exempted even Canadians.
How does one explain this 180-degree shift?
Two months ago, American immigration and border agents were fully aware that their president, Barack Obama, had an open door policy. They acted according to what they perceived their president wanted.
As of January 2017, the US has a president that is hostile to people from Muslim countries. He wants his border agents to screen them extensively. I am contending that if Donald Trump goes tomorrow and a democratic president comes in and orders a reversal of Trump’s immigration policies, those very hostile border security personnel would conform to the wishes of the new president.
What is the point?
Leadership influences people to act. People will do the things assertive leaders want them to do. It has been like this since time immemorial. When Socrates was sentenced to death, his followers cried openly in the streets. Since then leaders have held the key to social change. The example that stands out in the entire history of the world is Nelson Mandela.
When he became president, his attitude was made known to the South African people – no nationalization of white people’s business, no vendetta against white people by the new Black state, no harassment of white people anywhere in South Africa, no retaliatory violence, display of racial tolerance, mutual respect among the races etc.
From 1994 to the present time, the State in South Africa has not moved against white businesses and the Black employees in the State have not discriminated against white people or made life difficult for them. Black security officials do not victimize white people. You don’t see in South Africa Black policemen violating the rights of white South Africans. The opposite situation would have obtained if Mandela as president was constantly haranguing white people and invoking Black wrath against them. There is no doubt that violence and social disruption would have long followed.
It is the same with Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR. If Gorbachev had asserted the greatness of the USSR and spoken aggressively of preserving East Germany as a part of the USSR’s sphere of influence, perhaps Eastern European communism would have still endured. When he came to power, Gorbachev spoke about freedom and changes. The East Germans felt that Gorbachev was no longer interested in keeping East Germany as a satellite state. They were emboldened by Gorbachev’s emphasis of perestroika and glasnost. They brought down the Berlin Wall, bringing down world communism in the process.
People adhere to what their leaders want. Jean-Paul Sartre, the brilliant 20th century philosopher puts it this way; “the point is to affirm the specific character of the human act which holds fast to its resolves while traversing the social scene and which on the basis of given conditions transforms the world…within a certain field of possibilities man steps outside his historical and social limitations … and succeeds in making of what has been made of him.” (Source; Franz Marek, Philosophy of World Revolution, Intl. Publishers: New York, 1969, p. 54)
What Sartre is essentially talking about here is the power of the individual to change the course of history, in other words, LEADERSHIP. It is this kind of leadership that Guyana has not seen in dialectical and philosophical ways after Independence. Burnham, Jagan, Mrs. Jagan, Hoyte were able to move their country’s population to accept and implement the things they wanted for the country, but it was not fundamentally transformational.
Burnham was charismatic, but the setback to his penetration was his obsession with power. In the end, his followers began to question his wisdom when Walter Rodney confronted him and attacked that wisdom itself. Jagan was equally charismatic, but Walter Rodney, too, exposed Jagan’s limitation by showing how weak a leader Jagan was.
Hoyte was bold and daring, and as in the case of Trump; his edicts and enunciations were implemented, but he faltered when large sections found his approach to economics faulty.
This is what is going to happen to Trump. His influence on State employees will remain, because those employees know what their leader wants, but as the excesses become widespread and uncontrollable, diminution of influence will emerge.
Guyana is not going to make it in the future, even with overflowing oil money, if it doesn’t produce leaders that can influence people to act.

---

---