A warning to the politicians

Jan 05, 2020 Editorial

This newspaper is sounding an early alert, through sending a message of its own that none should mistake. It is going to take things to another level and pull out the stops.
It is to maintain the sanity and keep up the hopes of the people of this nation, all of them, free from the age-old nonsense that issues forth from our politicians, the perfect example of which are the holiday messages.
As usual, the messages, like the multihued flares and fireworks with their accompanying staccato bursts, came right on time. Our political parties try to outdo one another around these times in the unending intense grappling for any edge.
Their messages are a study in perfection: soothing and almost solemn, packed to the phrase with what it believes recommends and stirs, saying a mouthful while saying nothing. For those members of the public, who spare the time to listen to them, read them, there is wondering what these messages are all about, for at the core, there is only the trite and the tiring.
Now, this paper goes on record early: it is not impressed; it is not moved by the canned collections. Spare us; give us some content, some substance, something on which to think in this most pivotal of years, if not quarter.
We have let these exercises in party hypocrisy, in pious political tripe, pass by unchallenged in prior years. Well not anymore, and not this year, which means so much.
We are putting all political groups on notice, and none so sharply as the two older, larger, and slicker entities. Cut the bull, turn off the hoses of sound and syrup that lack any seriousness on the part of the utterers, and that mean nothing. The Guyanese people have had enough, and on behalf of the same brethren, we say enough is enough.
Promises are easy to make, false ones even easier. Deliver and tell us how and what, where everybody understands. Tell us about the unambiguous definition, and the scope and degree of accountability and intent.
Don’t give another empty speech, as though there is dealing with illiterates, through giving a deceptive bone to throw off the scent and scene of continuing governance wrongdoing. This one time around, Guyanese are neither too disengaged nor too bogged down by the demands of the day, that they don’t have the time to worry and to care. They do, and very intensely.
This is not business as usual, where the floods of farcical assertions take centre stage, and nobody bothers to find fault with them. We will dissect them, find fault with them, and hang them repeatedly before the nation in the most obvious ways possible.
And that’s a promise of the programme in mind. Tell the nation about oil management and we are going to ask: what about the money? Where is it? Who has access to it? What are the controls over it? And if we have the slightest issues with the answers provided, then we will take it from there.
Oh, and just so we are clear: we will not take sitting down or silently, those situations when the interests of the nation are ignored and there are no answers forthcoming.
The loyalists are entitled to their blind faith and dogged determination; they will reap or be ruined accordingly. On the other hand, the rest of dreaming, anticipating, depending Guyanese have no such luxury.
And, even if they did, they now refuse to waste it on those who have betrayed them, held them to ransom, and then sold them out in the past. These were people who ignored and insulted them in the past, as though they are mindless beasts of the field to be teased, spurred, and then abandoned when the fun is over and local political players move on to other more rewarding distractions.
When the weariness and disillusionment steps in, jilted Guyanese citizens only have their mirrors in which to gaze and share regrets, and ask: why? Why did we allow this to happen yet again to us?
It is why, at this early hour and in advance, all political participants on the local scene–huge and little, old and new, veteran and tenderfoot–are forewarned.
It is not business as usual from now until March 2. We will be watching, if not studying every position and every pronouncement like hawks. We will call out on the things that agitate, and we will do so tirelessly.
Only the most impeccable standards will be found acceptable, anything less will be pounced upon, torn apart, and those responsible will be dragged in the mud and hauled over the coals.

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