The plight of the GECOM chair

Sep 29, 2019 Editorial

GECOM is in the spotlight. That must be the wicked stepmother of all irresponsible understatements. For when is that tortured body ever not in misery-plagued Guyana? There are three areas that produce consternations in the nation-sprawling facility around which Guyanese grievously wound each other.
The first two of the three areas can pass by quickly. The supporting staff, motives, and actions trigger deep, selective unease.
The commissioners–three from each side–can be unfailingly depended upon to sacrifice sanity and country for party. Count on that for the dead-end of 3:3.To complete this trinity of nettlesome areas, there is the chair, a chairwoman today. Women in charge.
The charges surface with a roar, with a rush, always with rage. This is where this publication stays (and prays) this Sunday. There are long days ahead: ruthless, unforgiving ones. When this woman pronounces, she speaks not as the PNC or PPP choice. This paper reminds Guyanese, the consensus choice she was. For, in the most savaging of ironies, that consensus brings many public contradictions of her interpretations, positions, and decisions; of work product, forever second-guessed, and dissected to the last sinew and tissue. It is a dirty job.
Because like Indira and Golda and Thatcher, this chairwoman must put head down, stay the course, and hope to emerge unscathed. It is that kind of rabid society. The blows will come. Reasonably, a consensus chair speaks for wide cross-sections of the nation’s citizenry. Says who?
What counts is what favours; meaning us, our group, and our people. Alone. They are never less unswerving and unambiguous in the cast-iron finality of opinion and position. Not for elections. God help the chair, any chair.
For there are more announcements to deliver. There are those hardy people, who must send men off to war, or remove gently, one last time, the plug on the respirator of a beloved one. No coming back. There can be no turning back. So, too, the chair of GECOM cannot shrink or shiver. Not today, when a nation demands that duty be done, despite all the other wars looming.
The icebergs of the commission’s deadlocks must be broken. Many people are brokenhearted. Scapegoats and whipping posts must be found. That would be the chairwoman, whose travails have just begun. It is the price for a thankless job, for a society that is the epitome of treachery, and never more so than over elections.
Shame and disgrace; abuse and assault of every despicable kind for a chairwoman, the first of her ilk. There is nothing tender for her gender. One more time for those listening, a consensus one; the rages of the disappointed damn. Who does she belong to? Who is being succumbed to? What surrender is this?
This is the unfortunate norm, the inerasable ingredients of culture and mentality, that is of Guyanese elections matters. Nobody can do right by them, all of them. There is one alternative left. There must be trying for some, while hoping that most citizens will come to their senses.
Somehow, by some undeserved grace, there is trouble on that one. The direly needed grace is not forthcoming from any source here, and above there, too, it appears. The spirit gave oil, how much more is selfishly, thoughtlessly craved? Get some sense. Like the CCJ insisted –fix it your good selves. That’s a dirty job to be done. The sewers stare.
In Guyana, that means elections. Welcome to the chair. And C&O, PLE and OLE and, we at this paper dare to say today: count accurately what comes, those in good form. A prayer for the chair is in order. Time to roll up sleeves, get ready to face the music. It has the strains of funeral dirges -cameras, questions, microphones, recorders, scribblers.
From the authentic and caustic, to the patriotic and septic, they come. They convey. Good news for some. Bad news for others. How? Why? Why not? What else? Whatever…

This GECOM business should really be declared bankrupt, and put it and all of us out of misery, shouldn’t it? That’s up the road. Maybe. Today, there is only gritty, dirty, sickly reality. Ties must be broken, hearts also. Remember: no eggs, no omelets. The heartless, who eat meat, should ask the animal. Painful, it is. What a country! What a special brand of people! Mystical was the word of the wise CCJ.

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