Cuomo – the way it should be

Aug 11, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Ranking people from within his own Democratic party have called on him to do the right thing. It was the only honourable thing left for him to do to save face, some patchwork dignity. But first, New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo, had to do the principled and decent thing, and resign, which came Tuesday under unrelenting and severe pressure.
This was how President, Joe Biden, had led the way and made clear what Governor Cuomo should do, and he did. Democratic leaders in the State Assembly had already started to distance from him, went so far as to say that he has no choice, but to leave, and quickly. New York’s Attorney General, Ms. Letitia James (a Democrat), fulfilled her investigative responsibility most honourably. This is how our legal luminaries could shine in imitating, except they don’t. And the SUNY (State University system) and an ex-right-hand man of Governor Cuomo, James Malatras, condemned him in no uncertain terms. This is what principled people do. Cuomo listened and resigned. Now he has to pick up the pieces by making peace with his accusers, and paying his dues to the justice system. The man has been accused of serial sexual predation, abuse of power, denial and falsehoods, and cover-ups. He even got a woman to run interference and do his dirty work for him, in which there is another message for all citizens in this torn, ugly society.
We make it ugly and barbarous, when we do dirty work, against beliefs, against conscience, against logic and commonsense, for crooked leaders and corrupt individuals and cabals within political groups. Many in this country are still dogged in the claims of leaders and groups that they were electorally robbed. On the face of all the facts, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, they stay fanatically committed, but they are wrong.
Along the same lines, many in this country, some at very senior levels in the power structure, condone the alleged criminality of their comrades, and have given them a bill of free legal health, and what amounts to a get out of jail card. This is not the way to go, not even when comrades, even leaders, are among those named for what fall into the category of white-collar felonies. The wrong way was followed, when the equivalent of pardons was granted, and the accused stick around.
If and when we say we are about the law and honour, then we must have the courage and convictions to call out our own, let them have their day in court, be accountable before the people. But we have not done that here, not in the PPP, not in the PNC, not in whatever combinations have come before, or have followed since. The legal sentinels, the ethical watchdogs (if there are any around, ever were present) within political groups should be raising voices and taking the lead, in saying: this is not acceptable, this cannot stand, and those who are the objects of charges, of scorn, of great misgivings should go.
We say we are of the law and that no man is above it. Yet our actions at very senior official levels, very influential internal party positions, indicate contentment at holding peace and going along with the flow. Or with the crookedness and indefensible, if not irrational, visions and practices of craven leader(s). It is the same sordid, sickening situation within the ranks of those who support one damnable political side or the other. They have no dirty hands in the midst; there are only innocents and the wrongly targeted and victimised. But they take comfort in pointing out most enthusiastically all the terrible ills of political opponents.
This is the two-way street of political irresponsibility in Guyana that takes no accounting of one’s own, no matter how glaring the shortcoming, the actual failures. There is always some basis searched for, on which to overlook, and always with the same standard not applied across the yawning racial divide in this country that swallows and consumes each one of us. This is how this most promising of places stays stuck in the gutter and dismal swamp of its own making, and perpetuating.

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Cuomo – the way it should be

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