The absence of charity

Mar 17, 2020 Editorial

Guyana is now so far gone with its tantrums and histrionics that, by any standard, it has to be recognised as having proceeded very rapidly into rubber duck and pacifier territory. It is time for the toys to come in efforts to soothe an agitated society into some state of quiet normalcy, even if only fleetingly.
Since we are designated as unruly children unable and unfit to manage our own affairs of state, the foreigners come rushing to the rescue again. We promise to behave ourselves (law and order) before the foreign headmasters and headmistresses.
This is most embarrassing, definitely humiliating, for the few patriotic Guyanese remaining. It should be so for all Guyana but we do not even possess a residual modicum of self-respect and the dignity required to feel any shame.
So Caricom neighbours leave their own urgent matters hanging and hurry over here to hold out olive branches and white flags to lead us by hand and nose to some place, other than the usual gutters in which we love to cavort without a care.
Those well-meaning leaders from the regional body may be rightly considered to be brothers and neighbours, and like good neighbours, they run to help us extinguish the heats that leave us helpless and useless for the immense tasks and responsibilities that stand before us.
Truly, we are the exemplification of the handicapped, the pitiful, and the wretched.
Next in line, and the calls have already been issued, is for international agencies to perform similar salvaging acts with what is left from elections 2020. So, yet again, outsiders and foreigners are summoned to lend a hand to extricate us from the ugly, rancorous, and menacing family feuds that leave us hanging by a string.
It is as though the benevolent and paternalistic presence and hand of the overseers of slavery days still prevail authoritatively in this unemancipated land.
It cannot be described in any other way, or with the same degree of relevance and accuracy, given our harsh and mind-bending reality. Since we cannot do the things that are required by ourselves, through determined efforts to help ourselves, then that onerous task, most unfortunately and revealingly, falls into the laps of those of fairer and wiser dispositions.
There are few self-respecting peoples, and fewer nations with any scintilla of dignity, that would accept such a demeaning fate. They would want out of pride and some sense of self-esteem to do what is absolutely necessary to find a way, to carve a path, out of the bottom of the old gutters that keep bogging us down in the old ways and with the old results.
It is the height of savaging irony that this country, which has given so many illustrious sons and daughters in service to one noble cause after another in the world at large, is unable to call on, lean on, and trust in one of its own to take it to a different place, to a higher level.
It is powerfully enlightening to appreciate that this sovereign nation Guyana does not have in its inventory of citizens, one small group of wise and independent patriots, or one man or woman that commands respect and trust across the political spectrum.
In this society, there is this unalterable, unmoving position: when the sum of citizens is examined, he or she is thought of and concluded to be for one side, hence against the other. And because of this, there is suppression of any thinking, and denial of any opportunity, for a Guyanese solution to what are quintessential Guyanese problems.
In essence, what has resulted on a near continual basis are these weak plasters and Band-Aids that are temporary in nature, furnish no lasting remedies, and easily unravel as soon as the heat of any temperature changes come.
Put differently, when the passions in the political and social environment intensify, it is back to the failures of square one, the same 360 degrees retraced endlessly.
Our leaders insist on reaching to the outside for assistance. They reject movement towards local solutions born of local experiences and local minds. Unless we reengineer our thinking, we condemn ourselves to the treadmill of ongoing failure.