Indecisive leaders hiding behind others

Aug 30, 2019 Editorial

The journey to nowhere continues. In the forefront stands these troubled, indecisive men and women. We call them leaders. They could not make any decision, even if their very existence depended on it. No! They pass off, escalate, delegate, and engage in one tricky strategy after another to duck and dodge their responsibilities.
Look at them and what is observed? Easily recognised are those cunning, vacillating individuals unwilling to make any decisions, so they lean on friends and neighbours in the domestic community, or farther afield in the region. That would be the Chief Justice (ag) and the CCJ respectively. The latest recruit in these crafty exercises is the chair of Gecom. She holds a clear plastic bag of struggling cats; they claw and mewl without respite. The post-house-to-house registration announcement (and reactions) spoke abundantly and unsparingly in this regard.
Each local political chief and clan looks for these reluctant parties invited (more like thrown) into the fray to decide for them. They wait, in full combat readiness, to resume the deceptions through interpreting what is handed down, that is most favourable personally and tribally. There is nothing of the national in their positions.
At the heart of these parsing and contentious exercises is a now patented array of a seasoned confidence trickster’s scripts and postures. Thus, the games begin all over again, with no end in sight: about merged lists, Claims and Objections protocols, and Preliminary and Official Lists of Electors – PLE and OLE. One dogfight after another looms.
This is what should be noticed, as practised with increasing ease. This is what passes for democracy and governance in this land stuck in reverse gear, with engine revving loudly but uselessly. It is why we ask at this publication: Where can it go? How can Guyana get anywhere? What hope is there for this society and its peoples?
Perhaps another local and familiar illustration would help to reinforce how foolish we appear as leaders, as citizens, and as a society before the world. The only ones not seeing this is us; when we do, we don’t care. Our predicaments are like that of a squabbling, hostile, and incompatible couple. The problems abound; serious and chronic, if not grave. Instead of sitting down at arm’s length and engaging in genuine conversation on how to mend, how to agree on what must be done and by whom, and how to finalise going from where things are to where what could be, there is evading and escaping, through the subtlest of trickeries.
The troubled couple (think political sides) pass on their indecisiveness and problems – skin-crawling and sickening – first to friends and well-wishers, then neighbour and village head; and last, older, supposedly more experienced and wiser, in-laws. Is not this what Guyanese, through their elected leaders, have been doing?
Think CCJ. And Chief Justice. And GECOM Chair. Elected leaders refuse to budge; they refuse to come together to make a decision, any decision, to map a way out of the bad feelings and hard feelings.
Leaders, despite all the exhortations of the jurists of the CCJ, refuse to listen, so they hand over to the Chair of GECOM and the acting Chief Justice, with the contentment of knowing that, if the holdings go against their expectations, a comforting world still awaits. It is the regular world of critiquing and paralysing through more useless analysing and interpreting. This is what passes for leadership in Guyana, and its menus for failures.
Here is a slew of individuals, who cannot think for themselves, and who will not rise to separate themselves. They argued over a chair; and then a registration process (also restricted). In front of the current crop of local political wisenheimers disputes harden over lists, what is going to constitute claims and objections, and then something called the Official List of Electors.
In all of this, and based on the not unsurprising reactions, citizens should discern a chairperson struggling to please everyone (merged lists) and who ends up pleasing none.
As all those who created this mess laugh, Guyanese pull out their hair, wring their hands, grind their teeth, shed their tears, and lose their minds.
Up next, the war over merged lists and claims and objections. Guyana is its own biggest, richest suicide caricature and statistic. A modern marvel indeed.

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