Treading the tightrope between loyalty and integrity

Jul 08, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The challenge is great even for those inclined to walk a straight line in normal circumstances. It gets greater when matters are not so normal, as in a brother or comrade is in trouble, a leader’s grip is threatened because he is operating in an increasingly tortured situation. This is where Prime Minister Boris Johnson stands currently, and because of this many of his close colleagues, comrades in arms in many a political battle, have had their work cut out for them, with the ground on which they stand cut out from under their feet. They have little to stand on, not much going for them.

It is what brings up this most delicate of situations, where choices have to be made since so much is at stake. Like one’s integrity, which is foremost for some members in England’s House of Commons. The choice is clear, but it rubs harshly: to stand blindly by their leader, or to be about what carries to another day, by holding onto one’s principles, one’s standards, and in so doing, clutching tightly to one’s honour. Over two dozen British Members of Parliament, from the Tory side of aisle, the government benches no less, have cut ties to their troubled Prime Minister, and abandoned him to his inevitable fate.

Sajid Javid spoke with powerful eloquence for all those in his Conservative ranks who still possess some personal self-esteem left, some residual individual dignity intact. He coined a majestic phrase that is sure to leave a ringing impression with many. At least, those who hold the ethical, noble, and idealistic high. His words were that there can be the greatest difficulty in “treading the tightrope between loyalty and integrity.” But, in the end, integrity must always win out. Sajid Javid is one such person, which is why he gave up his senior minister’s post in the now crumbling Boris Johnson cabinet, the almost gone Prime Minister, now hanging on by his fingernails until the autumn.

Though this is so much about Boris Johnson and his leadership weaknesses and failures, it is more of men like Sajid Javid, who do not shrink from making the difficult choices that political life throws at them. Though it is never a simple matter to part from one’s leader, especially when under siege. But to save oneself when caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, then there is one choice, one only, which is to separate self and go as quickly and cleanly as possible, before it is too late. Treading the tightrope between loyalty and integrity means that there are those times when one has to be sacrificed. For the honourable, it is loyalty which is only casualty and at every opportunity.

It would be a remarkable development in this country to observe our own political participants on the national stage in the PPP/C Government, the present APNU+AFC Coalition Opposition, calling out their leaders, and condemning them for their failures at the top. Sajid Javid blasted Boris Johnson because he was the kind of man he had to be and none other. This goes both ways and our leaders in the major parties should be dismissing their ministers, their comrades, their very helpful loyalists, when they breach standards of integrity that stand on their own, make their own accusations, condemn and judge as verboten.

Here, we have senior politicians, leading men of the law, who see nothing wrong, no matter how long and hard they look, that is, if they really did look at all. We have leaders and loyalists covering for each other with nauseating regularity on everything: charges, oil, personal and public corruptions, which is why we have the Guyana that we have, and with which we struggle to cope. Oldtimers do it, the newcomers also.

Our mediators in parliament are distinctive cluelessness about their duty to country and integrity, and always make it their responsibility to come out on the side of loyalty, regardless. Bribery allegations, unethical leadership, and ministerial records thunder with revealing whispers, and still there is this craven allegiance to what is dirty. Because of men like these, we have a country like this. They tread, lean, love loyalty more than integrity.