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The rise and fall of leaders
It may take a while, sometimes, in a tortured deterioration before the relief of progression comes. Those leaders who do not listen, who refuse to rethink and adapt, doom themselves to an inevitable fall. It might be a long time coming; but it does.
In the world of sports, there is the fabled Manchester United and there is Jose Mourinho. He no longer is; now it is the asterisk, the fading of the storied manager who was. He took a well-stacked team and ran it with old ideas and old deafness and still older visions. The result was dispirited rebellious players; an underperforming group of millionaires; and a very discontented population of loyal supporters. There was no listening. The fall came: swift, abrupt, final.
From Jose Mourinho in the chill of European winter it is on to Nicholas Maduro and South American heat. The temperature is scorching with the political and social thermometer climbing, even soaring with one combustible development after another.
Things are so bad that there is talk of humanitarian aid from foes; there are teeth there. From the military being an option to now word off threatened civil war in that neighbouring country from the lips of the besieged leader himself.
And yet he resists listening, insists on misreading the determination of both internal and external forces arrayed against; and all the while misjudging his own strengths. They deplete daily: an early defection, more coalescing, greater energy stare in the face. This leader, this president himself, stares into the abyss.
That is not good for Guyana. A long, unguarded in many parts, border easily accessed stands as an inviting line of refuge and safety for the fearful. That alone could be overwhelming. And as has been common in refugee crises, the criminally-minded use that fleeing mass to conceal their own arrival. None of this is good for hospitable, but already strapped thinly stretched Guyana.
It is a bad situation, however looked at, however humanely minded. It began with another before Senor Maduro. President Maduro’s predecessor, like the legend surrounding that Roman general of old, Scipio Africanus, sowed all over-land and heart and soul-with salt. He, too, did not listen and pay heed.
Today, the successor leader follows in his footsteps, imitates what has failed and hurt and divided. He is not listening; he continues while the fate of a people hangs in the balance. And there is another leadership lesson for Guyana.
Those who do not listen make themselves vulnerable to a hard push and the fall waiting to follow. That hard, jarring push came to the Guyana government and its leaders in December last. Even viewed in the most generous fashion, because of leadership rejection of the expectations of disillusioned people, including its own, there was a fall.
No matter how limited; at the very least, a government exists in a precarious place and time; it totters. Now there is this scrambling, repositioning for continuity. Thus, there is this pulling out of one stop after another for purposes interpreted in an unfavorable light.
That is the right of the government, and it (wisely or thoughtlessly) shelters under a constitution, long damned by one and all, to find solace in every available harbor. Perhaps, there will be listening and responding accordingly, as circumstances and future opportunities permit.
As if not to be outdone, the opposition through its leader all along heard a single sound: his voice. It did not care to listen to the concerned, sometimes outraged and insulted, voices of its own pleading for a reconsideration.
Thus, leaders falter and fall ignominiously.
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