Dialogue is the way forward

Jun 18, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I had the opportunity of listening and watching politicians on the election 2020 campaign trail. The world’s number one citizen, the late Nelson Mandela, said in three of his Quotes. “We understand still that there is no easy road to freedom, we know it well; none of us acting alone can achieve success. We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world.”
“Let there be justice for all”
“Let there be peace for all “
“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity; it is an act of justice”
No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion.
I would like to suggest that what is at stake in negotiating norms are not simply the niceties of the procedural form.
At stake is realisation of how a genuinely democratic society has to function in practice at the level of its political relations and at other levels, if we are to avoid a mindless regimentation on the one hand or a senseless anarchy on the other.
Power in a modern society does not reside in any single source. In virtually every important context, if the underlying approach is simply an effort to determine who can wield greater countervailing power; who can threaten more or browbeat better or coerce more effectively, then the laws of nature – and the history of politics – suggest that sooner or later, the side with greater underlying strength and better strategy will emerge ‘victorious’.
Both logic and history teach us – if we are disposed, that is, to learn –at the political level, most of such ‘victories’ are pyrrhic one.
Politically, the ‘victor’ may simply find himself presiding over a sea of bitterness, a landscape from which morale is conspicuously absent, and an overall condition in which human alienation is such a pervasive factor that the notions of greater laissez-faire become empty, meaningless slogans, wholly incapable of practical realisation.
Either, much intellect or much imagination, to work out likely political consequences of ‘victories’ of the kind I have described.
My view is that modern societies, especially those that wish to preserve some functioning model of democracy as distinct from empty rhetoric should diligently seek a better way of resolving serious differences, whether at the political or any other substantive level. This is especially true of developing countries like our own, beset with a multitude of fundamental economic problems.
I am once more saying, in public, that for societies like Guyana, given our history, our traditions, the reality of our ethnic diversity, the sombre and adverse nature of our economic condition, our acute political sensitivities and complexities given all this, there is no viable alternative way forward other than the kind dialogue I am advocating, for the resolution of important national and sectoral differences in this society.
I believe that a majority of the citizens of Guyana, if given an opportunity to express themselves freely on the way forward for this country, would endorse the model which exalts dialogue and compromise and rejects the model which must inevitably lead to violent confrontation and to pyrrhic victory.
In speaking on behalf of workers, my fundamental position, I believe in an open, democratic society by which l mean one in which the legitimacy of the governing authorities clearly derives from the free, periodic, unfettered content of all those ordinarily eligible for the exercise of the franchise.
I believe in a society where the broad mass of the people can be actively involved in the decisions which actually affect their lives, whether at work, or in their legislatures.
But this fear cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the only solution which will guarantee racial harmony and freedom for all.

Yours Sincerely,
Sherwood Clarke
General President
Clerical and Commercial Workers Union

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