One man, one roadblock, one woman, one difference-maker

Jul 16, 2020 Editorial

There are these many stirring sayings that ring with a sweet soothing glow. Everybody knows one that appeals to their sense of fair play and character. We share one saying of our own, which is partly made up, partly on the shoulders of the thinking of others, while we probe for some sense, any wisdom from what has been a long dark nightmare, individual, communal, and national.
One can stand for something: make a difference, change a world, influence the present, reconstruct the future, and bring to a place that sets the stage for movement in one direction or the other. It is a little long but packed with the ingredients that make for a rich texture of life, the richest kind imaginable, the richest humanly possible. That is only one side of the story in the sometimes grand, many times sorrowful record of human toils, for in the next instance-the blink of an eye, or the press of a button, reality is recreated to what should not be. What it ought not to be before the bars of accuracy and truth, and before any standards of principle and what is right and ethical, as moderated and adjudged by not a self-serving few, but in the eyes and minds of a larger distressed, but honourable, world.
This was and is where we are in Guyana today. In some shape or form, it has been the smaller and larger story of this nation’s sorry history too often. The register of deeds speaks with piercing and dispassionate authority. It may have been one hailed criminal terrorizing in wide segments first, then forcing an entire country to retreat behind defensive barricades. It could have been one crime fighter leader and one group of men that took matters in their hands (after higher direction) to deal with the situation. It could have been one eulogized freedom fighter hero and his band of comrades (also intellectually orchestrated) recruited to rearrange the Guyana of then, leading to the scorching future memories now set in stone, and which render insensible. It could have been of one political leader or the other (whether from 60 years ago, or another for over a decade of years, or the last one from the last five) and their respective cabals of connivers, who have brought dreadfulness and the piteous to this land and its many peoples. It is of the many times, and of the one place, where the pains and tears flood more than its many rivers.
And as we outline this architecture of how much of a difference – for the good made possible or the bad that is inflicted – that one man could come to embody and project, we arrive as a paper, and a nation, to this hour and this situation of a construction called GECOM, and one man who was bent on doing wrong, and did just that all along. The works of his hands are there in the proofs of his perversities, his penchants for pushing repeatedly a nation’s peoples and their promises to the edge of the precipice. He, too, this CEO, has his angels perched on his shoulders and whispering in his ears. And so, he goes rogue: one man making a difference for the worst likely outcomes. For a nation and its potentials, for what goes to the heart of its destiny.
One stands against this man and his moves and manipulations. As circumstances would have it, the one arrayed against on this occasion of trial, in this moment and in this crucible of unprecedented test, is a woman (now two women, with the Chief Justice counted). We have called Chairwoman Singh many things, some hurtful, but the ones that are a little different and a little better speak of an ‘Iron Lady’ and a chairwoman, who is a woman of understated and underappreciated, but significant, substance.
We return to the top to remind of how we started out: one can make a difference, whether Chief Justice or chairwoman. Simply, for what is better, for what is right. From such small beginnings, from the agency of one, whole worlds are changed. Whole worlds are reborn, and for the better. May it be so for Guyana going forward.

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