March will reveal the creature among us

Feb 29, 2020 Editorial

Before we know it, elections 2020 would be over. Now February ends, and March is near, it could be the beginning of a new chapter in Guyana’s social and governance milieus. What will it be? How will we be? After the counting, clamouring and clashing over one or the other disputed, unsettled issues raised, and which positions and sets the stage for more than the verbal and the statistical, to where are we capable of going?
What has occurred in the distant and recent past has not been comforting: it may be prelude, but the sordid past is gone. We must deal with the future that starts on Tuesday, March 3rd, which is right now, as in this moment. May our aspirations, ambitions, and visions be about national fellowship for a new Guyanese order, a fulsome and reinforcing one.
As part reality check, and part cautionary note, it is sufficient to note that passions are roiling, that there is so much more below the surface in simmering impatience. Since so much is at stake, there are great rages and fevers and anticipations that are still unchecked and rearing to be put to the test, to be unleashed at a moment’s rumour, an incited monetary spark.
Lick a finger and stick it into the air and it is there. That sense and confirmation that there is so much more kindling in this particular electoral mix, which requires only the slightest of stirrings and the barest of flickers to reveal the true picture of where sentiments and things stand in elections Guyana right now.
If it is this way now in concluded February, then there is nothing of the soothing promised in March, and in heaving elections afterlife. One would have thought that there would be grudging admission that putting heads together is the best way forward, for separating from the strangulations that trap in the quicksand.
It has not been that way at all. Men test the waters and push every sly envelope for any tricky advantage that could be extracted, while they pretend at bland innocence should the usual heated protestations come. When this society, at this most fateful juncture in its existence, demands leadership of the highest integrity and reliability, there are those histories and new stories that make the rounds and, which only inflame the already overheated environment.
Genuine leaders must continuously prove who and what they are, the manner in which they manage what is ahead. We call upon them to be so, we challenge them, we go so far as to demand this of them all.
In late February, the contentious private polling stations took centre stage: one says, it is necessary and rational, another that it is disenfranchising and discriminatory. We cannot help ourselves in the calumnies that we pile on each other. The positives from that not-so-small storm are that a programme of listening and compromising followed, with reluctant agreeing emerging. The bottom line is that it did. This is what makes life manageable anywhere, that affords opportunity for moving forward, which, for once, came into decisive play here.
Amidst all of these disturbing truths, there have been promises of post-elections order. That is a miracle best believed in the observation and delivery of a degree of disciplined atmosphere, not just for a week or a month, but for a considerable time thereafter. At best, it may hold for a time. There unfortunately are those who are prepared to incite towards unsettling ends for their own purposes, which feather nests, and leave the masses in disarray.
This was hinted in post no-confidence developments from two Decembers ago, after court decisions, during arguments about registration. February ends today and the political and social prognoses are palpably discouraging. Now March comes like a roaring lion; sacrificial lambs may be needed.
From the UN to religious houses to sane people ask and pray for the civility of peace, reciprocal respect, tolerance. March will reveal if it is that kind of creature that walks with Guyanese.

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