This society cries for clean governance

Apr 28, 2019 Editorial

President David Granger has acted. It took a while, but the leader of party and nation has earned a well-deserved reputation of being deliberate to the point of excruciating meticulousness. Now he has moved. There may be-should be-more presidential action to reassure the public that its best interests are served.
The philosophies, standards, decisions, and actions have to flow from the top, the very head, as in the president. When a president is clean, honest, and principled in the dealings of the state and its peoples, then it is imperative that he is surrounded, and surrounds himself, with a wide circle of men and women of proven character and ideals.
There must also be those committed to the highest expressions of public office. They must be of him and like him, starting from the smaller confines of the inner circle and rippling outward to encircle a veritable Palace Guard of ministerial servants dedicated to reflecting the leader’s values and visions and visceral instincts.
The latter could be manifested through policies and practices perfected, and the actual financial undertakings on the ground before friend and foe, inclusive of the cynical and the critical.
To reflect well on a president, his supporting cast must be ready at all times to embody and project that quality of servus servorum dei; that is, by each operating as a servant of the servants of God. Or to emphasize this point, and as Seneca, that renowned Roman statesman, did counsel, “Live among men as if God beheld you. Speak to God as if men were listening.”
In any administration, whether that of David Granger, or of any other, this is the standard that has so long eluded the people of this country, and has left it the worst for wear. There is only the wearing of patience, of spirit, and of any belief that things can change for the better on a consistent basis, and actually be better for those who need it the most: the struggling citizens left on their own in the trenches, and many times taken advantage of for personal benefit.
The President was first embarrassed; now he must be insulted by this foolishness of “promotion.”
The critics will say that the president took too long, and that this is still too little. Those positions really cannot be strenuously or successfully challenged. Yet the head-of-state must be given some credit for acting and especially at this sensitive time of elections, intense vigilance, and swirling tensions in all political corners.
It could be an indication of more of the same (“promotions”) in store, should there be electoral success whenever such process is satisfactorily concluded.
Elections are also the mechanism and forum for eligible voters to make that fateful mark and place their handwriting on the wall. The words should be simple enough: a certain caliber of leader, a particular cadre of ministers, and a different brand of representation are all demanded.
From a purely historical and pragmatic perspective, that might be futile expectations and realizations, since this is a Guyana of a known and entrenched kind, with a special strain of voting obsession.
This society has been scourged, time and again, by the kind of leadership that is evidently self-serving. Too often local circumstances have been rife with leaders of unethical and immoral dispositions, which bring about two situations: cabals that steal and plunder; and a leader in such likeminded company delighted that he has closets with skeletons.
Today, this society cries for clean governance. Purges should be unsparing; they must be forthcoming. Guyanese could only benefit.

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