Build momentum on the GECOM appointment

Jul 28, 2019 Editorial

All Guyanese should treat themselves. True citizens of the soil should allow themselves the fleeting luxury of exhaling slowly; slowly but carefully, as only the first sharp prong in the tormenting trinity (chair, list, date) has found a settled resting place.
With a chair now a done deal, the two remaining prongs, no less sharp and scorching to the touch, should be quickly and amicably resolved. That, at least, has to be the hope of a tired, exhausted populace.
The hope has to be that the eternity of turbulent months, heavily characterised by the intense and the unswerving, that was required to fill a chair will not be repeated, will somehow be avoided. If somehow the wisdom and willingness could have finally been found to listen to courts, counsel from superpowers, and calls from concerned citizens, to arrive at the common ground of a chair, then inclination and resolve must be searched for to arrive at the same satisfactory state for a list and date.
We exhort leaders to be receptive to the maturity and not-so-small miracle that helped to overcome the barriers over a chair, to be just as responsive to the guidance that comes from somewhere and everywhere for what is national and practical with regards to list and date.
Let the tensions be lessened considerably; lessened in terms of brinksmanship, and the hardball volleying back and forth in public.
A list and date does not have to rise to another clashing of wills, a public test, or calculated partisan appeals. Just as the heavy lifting and nuanced chess moves over a chair, at the end, occurred in secret and, to some extent, on a leader-to-leader basis; so, too, can list and date be arrived at that is mutually embraceable.
Helping voices are never in short supply in Guyana; for that is what is detected in the development over a chair. It has to be the same for what remains.
Going forward, citizens are due an interlude of some ease, if that can be possible during always disturbing and dangerous elections seasons. Local history furnishes proof that it is this time that brings out the very worst that this society has to offer.
It could be a forlorn hope, but still needs to be presented by this publication: may Guyana be spared the dark and terrible side of its political nature.
Now, though moot at this point, the abrupt announcement of an agreement that startles (who said that secrets can’t be kept here) on the appointment of a chair will be debated feverishly in the days to come. It would range from stealth candidate, to who outfoxed whom, and who got their way.
Amidst those irrelevancies, this must be said; or could be relied upon with some confidence: after all that transpired and went down, one side of the harsh, bitter political divide did not wake up tired, grew even more disconnected during Friday, and inexplicably threw in the towel. That did not happen here.
The thrust is that there was some sort of understanding, some degree of horse-trading and arm-twisting. Whatever it was, and however engineered, it is good. Now, with this as springboard, the appeal is for the same approach–away from the public glare, possible mediation, and quiet, but hard bargaining–to form mandatory elements of the next challenges that are the immediate calendar.
That would be the finalising of positions relative to registration. There are three positions only with which to operate: use the existing list; sanitise the same list; or seek some combination of a hard cutoff date and an accelerated effort. The latter requires joint approval to deliver the required resources.
Minds have to probe for the sweet spot that is in the different positions, and which empowers a date. Lessons should have been learned from the chair. Now it is time to proceed and apply them while overseeing the nation’s business.

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