The test of the political system

Oct 20, 2019 Editorial

This is the test of the political and social system of Guyana’s promised future governance. It is the final test of the truth of where the voters in this country stand.
For or against? That would be the small parties and newcomers, who stand for this and that, who harbour hope, articulate that they represent difference and commit to difference-making. They must proceed with caution, and need confidence. If not, then they have nothing. They need confidence that the voters may act; caution because it is that kind of town and country, where clashing sentiments inch forward about the electoral prospects of arriving political presences. Will they endure?
By process of elimination, a great many could be reasonably ruled out– No interest, no feeling, no responding. That’s that! Come who and what may, whatever they say, it is just the way, the settled immovable way of things Guyana, elections Guyana, passions Guyanese.
Regardless of what and how the youths or disgusted or angry say they feel, they stay within the political barbwires. This does not leave many, only the most miniscule of minorities. Where are they? Who are they?
First, professional people are caught with feet in several boats, unbecoming in all, unconvincing as to political convictions, going through the motions, answering to and serving three gods only: cash, clan, and culture.
They are the first casualties. Gone! As in with other folks. Same story. Same group(s). Same mark. Same result. New political hopefuls flinch. Possible voting prospects absent.
Next, there is the private sector. Large swaths of it is strongly believed to be mainly corrupt, biased, double dealing, and incapable of taking a principled stand for anything truly national. Too committedly partisan, too dedicated to feathering their own beds, and too willing to partner with any group that allows them to perpetrate huge perversities against law, citizen, and state.
They are going nowhere, other than within the beloved divide, whichever side pleases. That is the second plank rotted and lacking any buoyancy as to promising change. The political arrivistes reel, veterans rejoice. Nothing doing. Maybe, next time…
Then, there are the religious people, who should be healers and difference-makers. The sacred books do teach so. The concepts inspire and energize. Indeed, but that is of the abstract. Reality reminds that this is Guyana, sensitive, racially attuned Guyana. The supposed paramountcy of scriptural virtues covers a belief system that bows before the manly and earthly.
Established political Caesars embraced racial gods. Another minority section (in aggregate, not at all) bites the dust, a lost cause, an electoral tragedy. Whither newcomers? Whither Guyana’s political center? That core of change agents, which really wants change?
Fourth, the overlapping circle–a full one–of civil society could have been a matchmaker. It has resorted to the contentment of quadrennial teaser and mischief maker; long on promise, short on substance in a crunch.
March 2 is D-Day, E-Day and V-Day all in one. Disappointments come; they leave devastating distresses in the wash because civil society is too much of a combination of all of the above: unappealing, unsavory, and unswerving from personal, commercial, and many times illegal callings; gone to the dogs. That is, with political collaborators. Who will vote for the little guys on the block, whose presence represent the increasingly forlorn? Political center stage Guyana is vastly deserted.
Fifth, millennials are ancients in remembrance and practice. Accordingly, the generational alphabetical (X and Y and Z) is ruled out: too well-indoctrinated and well-nourished in the ABCs of ancestral politics and the animosities and unchanging outlooks that cripple No fresh brand of idealism; no purifying charges of energy; no branching off from the norms of the racial storms.
At the core, always the same score. Public youthful commitment will soon have to furnish supporting proof. Some votes should settle doubts.
What is there? What is left? From all the above, where is Guyana’s political center? Where are those who dare to challenge first and then prevail against the sturdily ethno-centric fanatics and fundamentalist groupings? Too few are present, fewer venture to raise hand, still fewer leave a single shadow of intent.

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