Why Can’t We Be Like Neighbours?...We Must Learn

Why Can’t We Be Like Neighbours?…We Must Learn

Aug 23, 2020 Editorial

We are good at talking about ethical, transformational, and servant leadership, along with all the other kinds of sterling national leadership that inspires listening citizens. We do so at every opportunity and with great skill. But when challenge comes with proofs delivered, we fail miserably.
Look at what happened in neighboring Suriname with their elections and how it was wrapped up in a fair span of time after some short-lived hesitation and resistance. Why couldn’t we be the same way, instead of fostering fear and fueling fading hopes? Look at what happened in fellow CARICOM member, Trinidad and Tobago, in their just concluded elections, and how leaders rose to the occasion of what is best for the nation and showed the kind of mettle of which they are made. Why can’t we be the same way, conduct ourselves at the same laudable heights, instead of dragging process, country, citizens, and all reputations into the gutter?
No matter how kindly this is looked at, there is but one conclusion. It is that Guyanese leaders do not have what it takes to manage themselves better, to adjust their visions, to accept and respond to the will of the people and to the dictates of this process called democracy.
In this regard, and given what happened, the leaders of the former coalition government stand as unequalled examples of what was wrong and what was uncalled for and highly unacceptable in this region.
No elections, and this is regardless of what is at stake, should make honorable men stoop so low, as to lose all that they stood for, or as it was believed by many that they embodied deep inside. But this is what happened, and we are the worse for it. When we most urgently needed the standing up, and sacrifices, for the sacredness of that abstraction and antiquated convention called country, all we in Guyana received in spades was the usual that is about party and party only and foremost. Now we pay, and live with, several heavy, wearying prices.
There are the raw passions and sharp divisions that rage. There are the hurts and the hates that hobble and cripple. And there are the settled suspicions-the hardest of unmoving suspicions-that obstinate and difficult men and women, on one side, waged an unholy and unsuccessful war to thwart the electoral process by blatant attempts at cheating. And alongside that is the other side of the same coin is that there are many similarly thinking supporters on the defeated side, who are adamant that they are the real victims of wholesale deceptions and elections riggings.
Any rational and reasonable person sifting through the clashing positions and narratives for some grains of truth would be certain to reach this point and ask this question: it is only about the party and about the tribe; it is about victory and nothing else, regardless of the overwhelming elements of surrounding realities. And the closely related inquiry that comes to mind is this: where is the broadly national and genuinely patriotic in any of this? Where are those ingredients when men, not unwise to the ways of Guyana or the wider world, cast everything to the winds and roll the dice in reckless disregard for the outcome, and its significance for the welfare of the population? How we need a different kind of citizen to lead us somewhere else! How we could use them, if only they possess the vitalizing visions that lift us upward!
It may help to listen to Mrs. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, losing political contestant in the Trinidad and Tobago elections, who is now consigned to the role of Leader of the Opposition for the next several years, should she consent to stick around, should she be able to overcome her wounds.
In an article captioned, “The people have spoken” (KN August 19), Mrs. Persad-Bissessar shared some thoughts that should resonate with Guyanese, regardless of political loyalties. She said, “the results have shown…that our nation is deeply divided on which party should be running the affairs of Trinidad and Tobago.”
She said also that she was disappointed. Who would not be after a closely fought, and very intense, political battle? That person, that political competitor, would be less than human.

But it is where Mrs. Persad-Bissessar went next that stands out and separates her (and her party) from here and how our own leaders do things in Guyana when confronted by similar disappointing circumstances.
This is what the losing contestant had to say: “I am not prepared to fan the flames of hate.” And “now is the time for reconciliation and healing among our people. We are one nation.” Nothing like this has been heard or has happened in Guyana. And even when it comes through the platitudes of political propaganda, there is the lingering sense of the deepest of hypocrisies.
Why can’t we be like our neighbours? Why is it that elections here rise to a matter of life and death? This is how we die on our knees with this time no different than any other. We must be honest with ourselves-all our leaders-and we must rededicate ourselves, all of us, to learn well from our neighbours.