With so many loving Guyana, why the irreconcilable partisanship?

May 06, 2020 Editorial

To this date, there are few, if any, Guyanese who have professed publicly anything but deep love for this country. There is no unpatriotic citizen, no partisan, only those who glowing with great interest and comforting concern for the wellbeing of this society. It is where love of country transcends love of party. If this is really so, then the issue becomes this: how is it that we are so determined to maintain the status quo, meaning ascendancy, of this or that racially-bent group at the expense of all that is constructive and uplifting for the whole of this land?
We say that if their love for this country is really true, then it should and would compel the honesty to owning up to part played, through silence, through absence, or through failure to put country before party, when it counts the most, which should be now. It seems to us to be a continuing case of hypocrisy, of pretending at what is not present within, and the playing of games, when what Guyana needs is for its sons and daughters to be honest and straightforward and nothing more. There must be objectivity, that concern postured, that prompts questioning, calling out one’s own group by laying all one’s cards on the table, with none secretly and calculatingly withheld.
From what could be gathered in public representations, many are quick to claim that they are not supporters of any party. If that were so, then why the unresolved electoral recount speaks to such a percentage of the eligible exercising the franchise? Why all these ferocious disputes about who cheated, and who won? Why are they not more of a potent centrist presence that is undeniably neutral and distinctively independent, which seeks what is best for country above all else? A centrist presence that is feared and has what it takes to be a respected local mediator forced to be recognized and reckoned with through listening and compromising? Why is all of this not happening, if there is so much love for this country, when it is obvious that no one political group would be allowed to govern smoothly and efficiently? And that only more chaos and calamities are promised in the aftermath of any elections finalized?
Given the degree of love professed, there should be a sizable block of a viable middle ground, which could be the difference maker(s) so longed for, so much needed. It is either there is a small subset of genuinely devoted Guyanese to country above all else or that there is a bunch of earnest well-meaning people who have perfected the art of persuasive self-deception (at best) or, at worst, there are those who possess extreme mastery of a peculiar kind of bland hypocrisy.
Though many say that they hold no brief for either PNC or PPP, there is still another vital component that heightens the perplexities of March 2. It is that the gaggle of new groups stand as forlorn silhouettes of those ignored and dismissed. Whence all those who said that they were so disgusted, so much against this one or that one, that they did not lift a finger to complete two crisscrossing strokes with a pen in favour of newer faces? To where did the neutrals and patriots disappear on Monday, March 2?
We are still looking for all the younger ones, the more educated ones, the more supposedly thinking and sophisticated ones, who clamoured loud and long about their pain and their shame at what has dominated the history of this country. Where were all the disillusioned-on March 2?
They are nothing else if not their political parents’, political children in thinking and action. At the naked core, those who claim to love this country with a passion (and they mostly likely do in their special way) and those who stand up to articulate that they are of no political party (meaning the two monstrosities) faithfully followed the historical racial scripts and cultures. They contributed in no small measure to the way things are precariously poised in this society at this time.
There is the temptation to ponder again that now ancient Guyanese paradox: what if it were otherwise…

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