Elections: The Truths Revealed

Jul 19, 2020 Editorial

One Prime Minister called it “a long running soap opera.” Another one from the region said that “the truth hurts.” And still another leader from around here, perhaps, summed up Guyana’s disfiguring and soul-sapping elections with words to this effect: it is not going to end well. Could all these people be dishonourable, willing participants in a conspiracy against the coalition, be reduced to the pathos of those who have lost their minds?
In Guyana, coalition leaders and supporters (the diehard ones) insist in persevering that they and they alone have the facts and know the truths of this elections season here, and from the figures presented (dreamed up) that their group won. We placed ‘diehard’ and ‘dreamed up’ in parentheses for emphasis, so that the foolishness and flimsiness of the coalition’s incredible conclusions and positions are more pronounced. Diehards only, because many at the different levels of its rank and file supporters recognize the real truths, and quietly seek to distance themselves from the lies that label them as aiding and abetting the ongoing follies of the leader and his dogged inner circle of extremists. The hope of all Guyana is that the leader is not a likeminded extremist, too.
We say, and the region and the world agree, that what the coalition presents rises beyond concoction. It is surreal, beyond belief, these numbers dreamed up, these hardline positions about victory that stand shakily on air and topple over embarrassingly with any scrutiny. When the coalition embarrasses itself, all of us are humiliated again and again before an increasingly unsettled world. That world is doing more than talking and warning. It is acting and readying to ratchet the pressure, the first turn of which was that of visa restrictions.
For its part, the coalition’s reaction was a study of some contrast. Some of its stalwarts immediately dismissed word of sanctions as meaning nothing. We warn them that visas are the first step only, and the mildest in the menu of options. We find it hard to believe that those who aspire to govern Guyana, who speak of struggling for democracy and righteousness, would want to live like drug dealers and money launderers and human traffickers. To put more pointedly, that they would crawl and move about to conduct the business of the peoples of this country in secretive manners, via underground channels, and with rogue regimes confined to a similar boat. No Guyanese should desire, or identify with, circumstances that compel our political administrators to function under the cover of darkness and by stealth.
We do not like it, but if the leaders of this country, the determined coalition leaders, continue to raise their middle fingers in the air and moon their behinds at the world, in defiance of the most influential people in the region and hemisphere, then they risk being taught the severest of lessons. This country is too small and too weak, despite all the bravado, to keep going down the road that is being thought of, and increasingly appearing to be the hard one that is chosen.
We do not like any of this, not because of any concern for the welfare of senior coalition people, which is deserving but for what would be the terrible plights inflicted upon the poorer and more vulnerable in this society. We do not care too much either for most of the rest of the political crowd, but what is right is right. Because, if there is no such thing, no morsel of faithful adherence to what is right, then we do not have anything by way of systems, or with regard to laws and honouring them in steadfast obedience.
What we have had here in this elections season is one profanity after another, from multiple violations of commonsense, truth, fairness, justice, and commitment to some form of constant and universally acceptable standard. Instead, what the coalition brain trust keeps conjuring and presenting amounts to what is helpful to its warped cause, what is fulfilling of its crooked visions. This is wrong, however looked at and on every count. Yet the coalition persists with what is tantamount to criminal farces. The ominous is promised: it will not end well.

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