“Few appealing options…”

Jul 01, 2019 Editorial

That was the thrust of a New York Times article (June 23) on where the American President stood in the showdown with Iran. In that tinderbox with its many known and unknown shoals (all treacherous), any spark holds the high probability of rapidly deteriorating from the ominous to the irreversibly cataclysmic.
Today is not 1945; it is neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki. It is not where only one party possesses overwhelming firepower; an unanswerable arsenal. Though unequal in depth, there is reach and strength.
As the New York Times soberly reminded: there are few appealing options for the leader. There is a lesson in this for local leaders. All of them who care to listen and to be real leaders of a people needing just that: real, transformational leadership.
What are the few options in the testing political enmities that encircle Guyana?
First, there is the one-party approach: unstoppable forces hurtling from two opposing directions. That delivers the same unsatisfactory result: fear and failure; and abiding hatreds.
Second, there are the newcomers: ANUG and a tiny handful of other newcomers. Problem: an insignificant few are listening to them, thinking of supporting them. Unswerving allegiance to the one-party option. What is left? Third, boycott the polls. Not happening.
Last, there is the bilateral as in congregating in one place for one purpose towards one objective. The one purpose: to work in good faith to find a solution, a mutually acceptable solution. The single objective: an end result that is unprecedented in political thinking, political culture and political result. Examining the social and political map and redrawing the same lines, using the same instruments, and establishing the same governing boundaries all have to be unceremoniously swept off the table and outside of any scales of mental weighing.
Those are nonstarters; those have failed terribly. Never worked before; definitely not going to work now and going forward.
There has to be the embrace of compromise. There has to be a reciprocal readiness to cease all talking of a constitution. The document, this instrument that has plagued and haunted, was erected on a foundation of fraud and deceptions. Frank and daring men, forthright and conscientious leaders should not want anything to do with it.
It is time to stop parading what is in effect a prostitute pretending to be a paragon of unsullied uprightness. That constitutional prostitute is the mother of all of Guyana’s political offspring. Its birth is scorned; its life has been of retardation and depravity and uninterrupted national humiliations. This profane parchment must be treated as though it does not exist.
Leaders must have the courage to start from scratch. No notebooks from the past. Only a prayer book for the present and the future; a prayer book to position the peoples of this country correctly, and for the first time, in a place, where they can cohabit less distrustfully first, then commingle less disputatiously next, and last (perhaps) coexist less hurtfully.
So that more can get somewhere better, somewhere higher. More as in a real cross section of Guyanese society, besides the racial narrowness that has characterised the aftermath of every political contest endured by this nation, and which has decimated it (numerically by those leaving) and devastated it (environmentally for those remaining). This is the hour and opportunity for a clean, fresh beginning. The options are few: it is of the supremacy of one side at any one time that is despised with a passion by the other. This is reality. It is commonsense. It is not working. It has bred fear; spawned divisions. Surely, leaders cannot continue to treasure this as a constructive bequest to the nation for whom there is overdue obligation. Surely, this cannot be cherished: fear and failure from fragmentation.
How about the option of genuine social cohesion, as influenced, as powered by political fusion? There are no other options, are there?

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