Back away from the precipice

Mar 07, 2020 Editorial

A new government should have been in place at this time. We do not believe that this settles anything relative to the validity of the 2020 elections results. It is too unclear; it is too shrouded in uncertainty; it is too rife with all the heaving ingredients of the unsatisfactory.
It should have been a grand moment, this announcement of a new government and a new start, it is now anything but, and has succeeded in shattering any residual confidence, any lingering complacency, any forlorn hopes for continuity.
For how can we in this Guyana, continue like this? To what fresh new start? To deal comprehensively and authoritatively with our oil finds and oil responsibilities? To deal with anything related to meaningful, powerful, rightful governance.
Look around and pay even passing attention, and the stories of the reactions are, without fail, indistinguishable in the sameness of their content: this is gone about in the wrong way. This will not be able to stand, this cannot stand. It will not be allowed to stand as it is rejected out of hand and almost universally.
Look and listen intently, again. The coalition government is losing friends fast; it runs the high risk of serious isolation, of being branded a pariah government, a rogue one at that, too.
The reins of power are not worth it; the welfare of Guyana should not be gambled away because of it. Neither the much-desired social ambience should be sacrificed for what is already hurting not the peace, but this new government itself.
The influential and far reaching foreign presence has been quick to articulate its position in unambiguous terms. It does not like, does not appreciate, the turn that things have taken. That articulation and that posture should be particularly meaningful and should be recognised for what it is.
The new government is not in a good place. It faces the specter of, at best, the stormiest of peace, the most hostile of receptions. And that is precisely where it is, when the groundswell of unequivocally negative positions is examined, there is little of the supportive or the encouraging.
Which government could function like this, before such an onslaught of contentiousness, which is sure to last way into the future? It is from every corner within the seething local milieu, now raging and terribly fragmented along the usual divisive racial lines and, resonating from the core, in the sharp and unrelenting and ungiving voices for or against.
There is the private sector with all of the implications of its financial muscle and reach. There is the Bar Association and the other professional agencies lined up in protest, in dismay, in barely concealed disgust.
Those hard voices and increasingly hardening hearts are sure to gather much loud and stalwart company in the days to come. As firmly entrenched as this government may believe it is right now, and with strong sentiments about its chances at longevity, the odds of its continuing existence and survival are not favourable.
It is why we at this paper appeal to the government and its leaders: rethink this thing. Rethink and restart how this has been gone about on Thursday and how it is going to manage with each passing day. We say again and again: do not go about competing first and preparing for governing in this manner. Whatever the thinking and vision, this momentous step is already running into one brick wall after another, with many more certain to line up behind each new established and discovered one.
Whatever sources, whatever rationales, were utilised to arrive at this point, they are not gaining any friendly support from any quarter, save for that of dyed in the wool believers and followers.
What has been done is wrong for the coalition as a political group, wrong for its adherents, wrong for this society in the entirety of its peoples. This can only be made right by undoing the wrong and doing so quickly and completely.
We urge a revisiting to what was agreed upon late Wednesday evening as to process and approach. Let that count continue. Let those results hold.

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