Arizona Speaker – an example for all Guyanese

Jun 27, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – His name is Rusty Bowers and it is an unknown one to most Guyanese. But he is the Arizona House Speaker, a Republican party member, a voter for the former American President, and a man who plans to do so again. But one thing that he will not and cannot do is be a part of any scheme that makes him “a winner by cheating.”

This is what Mr. Bowers spoke of in tearful testimony before the House of Representatives January 6 panel investigating the stormy, and still dispute-filled, U.S. presidential elections of 2020. “I do not want to be a winner by cheating” has the ring of a man of impeccable honour and one of deep beliefs. Mr. Bowers comes across as just such a man. He stands as an example that puts to shame his fellow Republicans in America, who extend and deepen the polarisation ripping that country apart. It is of a man, a political figure no less, and one caught in the furnace of a most trying personal and national political moment, who rose above the rest of his peers.

Again, the Arizona Speaker stands as that standard, that role model, to which not only Americans should aspire to and strive for, but also all of us everywhere. This includes Guyanese over here in this tiny, torn, and tortured land.
Guyanese have experienced repeatedly, in elections after elections, the wounds that will not heal, and which only widen and ripen and poison one and all still some more. There is so much we can learn from a stalwart like a Mr. Bowers, in whatever form he or she takes and comes, from a figure as determinedly and powerfully luminous when the times are raging, and at their darkest, most dangerous.

For when we have that kind of honour and that kind of bearing before whatever God is believed in, then it is what brings us to a place where we can be comfortable in ourselves with saying: not this way, not this time, not on this watch. Leaders are not forced to backtrack or hide; they are not put in that position where they have to create new lies to plaster over old lies. Since they were not about lying or falsifying in the first place, then there is no need to waste time and energy in defending the record or any revelation that points to some twisted practice. Any claim that come from any corner would be what can only be of the distorted, and so dismissed with disdain (and without any further need for more deceptions).

Leaders don’t have to play games with what they did or didn’t do with oil wealth and oil prospects. The truth is the truth, and so are facts that are irrefutable because they are irreversible, and no one can contest their authenticity or their validity. Supporters do not have to bend over backwards, and come up with any kind of craftiness, to prove how loyal there are. Rather they stand for what is straight and true, and like Speaker Bowers, know that there is only one way to go, a place that they must. It is for what is right, and what will not tolerate any interference or resistance from any source, no matter how powerful, no matter how loved.

It is clear that Speaker Bowers, a man of that rarest of mixes, a politician and a practising and devout Mormon, knows where his first priority, his closest allegiance must be to, and that is what places him on this earth, and prompts him to live by a certain infallible code. Man can be disobeyed and distanced from, especially when he engages in the questionable, the borderline, and what is outright wrongdoing. But one’s code of conduct, laced with integrity and honesty and honour, are what will see through any day, and against whatever comes.
We have our terrible troubles here, and we will fuel them when we continue to go down the same road and not stand up for ourselves. When we refuse to be shining lights for what could make our society better, then we drag it down and destroy it, like we have always done.

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