After all of these birth pains

Apr 26, 2020 Editorial

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After all the sounds and furies from this side and that, the endless squabbles and squalls of divided and raging supporters, the birth pains of our democracy and their lasting traumas had better mean something. If there is to be any healing and growing from the learning, then positive things are what must predominate.
Through the still impenetrable thickets of anger and despair over no-confidence motion embittering post-elections passions, the sweet taste of hard-earned success or agonizing loss, we cannot be the same, must not proceed in the same selfish and self-destructive paths. For this long and arduous process to mean anything, then Guyanese men and women first have to fix the bar high for themselves and then higher for their leaders. From the present, both the succeeding present and the beckoning future look most unpromising.
The hope is that we would have learned something, a lot of things. The shaky belief is that we, as Guyanese, have to be different, will be different, and must be different, from the sheer force of the experiences encountered along the journey and which enlightened somewhat. Now the great, the greatest, challenge is to trust ourselves to partner to find a way forward. If it is the old Guyanese ways stuck to through of the same sordid political business as usual, of enriching self-help, of marginalizing and discriminating, then the struggles would represent so much energies and time wasted. If and when we were to do so, then we doom ourselves to the worst circle of Dante’s hell.
For certainty, there are those many, who wait with drooling for the riches to be exploited rapaciously for personal benefit, who ready to lead the charge at plundering whatever comes, and it promises to be a lot; it does not matter which party triumphs, this is the reality that is promised. But after all of the agonies, all of the upheavals, surely there must be some lessons learned, some profound truths discovered? That is, after all the warring about a corrupted process, and the winning of the day (whoever does so), there should and must emerge the resolve to rise to the required level of transparent and accountable governance. Or else we are going nowhere.
Perhaps, it is asking too much of us, but whatever comes must be of genuinely clean governance that scorns corruptions of any kind and corrupters of any stripe. This cannot be about railing stridently against electoral corruption, with a view to continuing all the individual, bureaucratic and political perversities that have reigned supreme on a national scale. Then, what would have been gained? What value the hard sacrifices made? What prospects for a nation and the pure democracy supposedly discovered, if there is only a continuation of the same plagues of before, but now only on a grander scale, because of the currently diminished wealth that gushes forth out of the ground?
It is our view at this publication that for any progress to be made, then there must be another revolution in how we live going forward, by how we hold friend, comrade, ally, and neighbour to the fire and the light, and when found wanting to be rid of them most unceremoniously and with unerring finality. If this does not become the norm, and despite our sharp misgivings, then whatever was considered victory would be in vain, and a pyrrhic one for the peoples of this nation.
Efforts could and should be made relative to identifying tirelessly and weeding out any budding elements and instances of corruption at the hands of the faithful. We challenge political leaders to be examples of real guardians of democracy when the spotlight has waned, when the foreigners return to their regular businesses, of which there are many and mostly away from Guyana. And this is the mandatory key that has to be addressed and reshaped: how we live next to each other, how we deal with and coexist peacefully and constructively alongside one another. That may be as challenging to ask a 300-lb wrestler to dance on one toe.
For this is going to be the hardest of nuts to crack, one that cannot be shrunk from, one not subject to the usual superficialities and preening public pieties about one people (which we are not) or of one nation (which we have never really tried to be) or of one destiny (which is dual at best) and, after the ills and rages of 2019 and 2020, at its very worst shredded and scattered all over the 83,000 square miles that still outline our place on the globe.
In view of all that happened on the public and private stages, it is going to be extremely difficult to hold things together. It may prove to be too formidable a task to make the vast bulk of citizens wake up and be miraculously reborn with a new outlook on what (maybe) just could work. But the difficulties could only be overcome, if we dare to be fearless and forceful enough to risk facing the daunting challenges that are so much a part of the barren Guyanese fabric, its ruptured tapestry of races. Leaders cannot be so preoccupied with other priorities, or with remembering the wounds of this most bruising and piercing of contests, that they refuse to spend any capital, manifest any inclination toward what could be healing and contribute immensely to leading towards the reconciling so urgently needed.
Though the chances of even meager progress are slim to nonexistent, leadership visions and personal political calculations must be recalibrated and dedicated to making the pains forgettable and bearable. Many worlds, bright and beautiful, have been promised in both spoken and written words. Soon will come the time to deliver on all of them; not merely the lavishly personally rewarding, as individually selected. But through all of those sworn to so fervently during the campaigns and ferocious clashes of competition, the smog of our smoldering political wars.

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