National healing

Aug 30, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We revisit an old subject. Since our leaders talk a lot, and do very little about it, national healing belongs on the front burner of consideration again. We have managed to get by up to this time in one piece, through limping along as a nation.

It would be our biggest error in judgment, the worst fooling of ourselves, if we still think that we can continue to crawl around so handicapped, and believe that we will get the best from what is in our hands today.

We have had sugar and bauxite, and hobbled along in the last decades of the last century. We have gold and timber, and though the sources of much dispute, we go from day to day, and count our blessings. But now that we have the mother of all rich discoveries, oil, we just can’t keep going on in our divided state, and hope for the best or that it will happen because leaders make beautiful speeches, supporters clap their hands, and there are hopes that we will all live happily ever after. What worked with sugar, bauxite, gold, and timber (and from the rest of our rich resources) is simply not going to work with our oil wealth. The history of oil is littered with conflict, with pain, with incredible hostility everywhere that it has been found. Third World and other impoverished societies have lived with the worst brutalities and agonies that follow in the discovery and ownership of oil riches. Long local histories, bitter memories, and ugly divisions all have a habit of consistently rising to the surface whenever oil shows its face. We didn’t have oil, but we already had, lived with, those animosities and intolerances that wrench societies apart, make enemies of citizens.

We now have oil, and we live with our demons weighing heavily on heads, we desperately need national healing if we are going to get the most from this gift that is ours. National healing is not going to occur because President Ali and the PPP/C say so under the banner of ‘One Guyana.’ On paper, and as an echo in the ear, One Guyana definitely has a sweet and soothing sound, but it is only a start, and not enough, never will be considered to be enough, embraced by all Guyanese. National healing will not come about because Mr. Norton and the Coalition Opposition calls for it, no matter how strongly and sincerely, if such were the case.

As both major political groups and their leaders well know (their supporters also), there is just too much rancor, rancidness, and rage in this society for any authentic and enduring national healing to register throughout this society, and in all of its political strongholds and tribal corners. To say this differently, a system and practice that embodies bonafide national healing will only be deep-down, broad-based, and spiritually empowering when all of our peoples are made to feel and believe that they have a stake in developing Guyana, and contributing to the conversations on our combined national destiny.

National healing, to give the strongest, most unmistakable emphasis, cannot and will not be a Guyanese reality without both the PPP/C and the Coalition and their leaders buying into the vision of a Guyana that is shared, and one that is inclusive, in deeds that encircle all, invite all, and offer all a seat at the table. It must be more than appearance, national healing must be about both sides taking the first tortured steps to look beyond the past, to rise above the present, and to walk together into whatever the future brings. This oil can bring the most glorious of futures to Guyana. But not if two-fifths, or one-third, of the population alone call the shots, make the most consequential decisions. And not if the remaining sizable fractions of Guyana’s demographic believe that their utility is solely to be manipulated pawn or convenient buffer in the political visions of the larger groups in this country. Real national healing can bring about the much-desired ‘oneness’ that equips citizens to confront and combat the internal and external forces that divide us, weaken us, and exploit us for their benefit only.

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