OP:ED - Why can't we come close to this here?

OP:ED – Why can’t we come close to this here?

Feb 01, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – A start is made beyond our borders, then I return home, and ask: Why can’t we ever? What is wrong with us? How do we get to that self-respect and love urged in parliament by a Guyanese star? What hope is there for us, oil or no oil?

GHK Lall

Two American Presidents fell overboard with official documents, the first in his Florida castle, the second seemingly wherever suited his fancy. The former US President is still the Chief Executive in his mind, maybe even thinks that he is still resident in the White House. Megalomania does that to a few lost souls each time a spell strikes. As for the incumbent, the man with his finger on the nuclear button, the worrying part is that, at times, he doesn’t register as knowing which century he is in, or of which country he is the leader. This is the state of the United States these days, and it is a sad one.

The good part about this is that the U.S. Justice Department has moved with zeal, and latched onto not one, but two Special Counsels to look deeply, determine who failed, what should result. Like they say, only in America. Only in America can two presidents be under the microscope, with both on the dilapidated side. No one would ever mistake either of these two U.S. Presidents for Lincoln, or FDR; maybe some reincarnation of Richard Nixon, but nobody else.

Enter Robert Hur, registered Republican, a U.S. attorney appointed by President Trump, who declined to go after the politically charged investigation of Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry. Now, Robert Hur may not be Ben Hur, but he has inspired as an independent soul, when his integrity was on the line. I would recommend the same for our legal eagles-one in particular, a PPP Government man-to listen, learn, and lift themselves up. Then, there is Special Counsel, Jack Smith, tasked to investigate former President Trump relative to his handling of classified documents. Like Hur, Smith has been hailed for being unbiased, principled, and independent. In addition, Smith isa prosecutor who has investigated people from both the Democratic and Republic parties, managed that tightrope with skill and accolades for his fairness.

I write today of besieged American Presidents, and American Special Counsels, with Guyana in mind. With 300 plus million citizens, and 200 plus years of liberty and democracy, America can dig up men like Robert Hur and Jack Smith, and hand them the instruments to investigate presidents. There is the supreme confidence, the steady maturity, and the willingness to trust in the ethics, principles, and honor of some, even though they have roots in the opposing party.

Compare that to how we are, what we have in Guyana. I hang my head in shame, in regret, and in disgust. Here everything and everyone are assumed to be rank partisans, hence filled with prejudice, and dishonorable. In Guyana, being partisan means one is racial, arguably racist. Both the PPP and the PNC are acutely, serially, guilty of such unswerving visions, armor-plated convictions. I urge Guyanese to look critically at our legacy in times of controversy, in hours of crisis.

We are unable, unwilling, and unready to find one Guyanese, who is not of our own tribe, to spearhead an inquiry, a commission, a panel that looks into what went wrong in difficult and demanding circumstances. Things are so bad here that there is this great insecurity, a powerful uneasiness, to confirm two top judicial officers, acting for years now. How depraved can matters get? To probe for truth in a murder, we have to obtain foreign forensic experts. And in the granddaddy of pulverizing disputes, our national elections, we have to call for CARICOM, the Commonwealth, Canada, the EU, and US. In local crises threatening to mushroom into catastrophes, the cry, need, dependency is always for foreign crisis mangers, and foreign babysitters and foreign seeing eye dogs to lead us in our blindness.

All the big pontificators from parliament and at the pinnacle of public offices are reduced to total uselessness. They can’t think. They can’t finalise a weighty decision, make a hard call, so trapped they are by the fear that to reach for a man or woman from the other side is as good as committing political suicide, giving up the ghost. Inevaluating things, my conclusion is that this is here to stay, for we have fallen increasingly in love with the way we are. We can’t go anywhere, with this culture embedded; this shameless, humiliating foreign dependency. To undo this full Nelson, I urge President, Vice President, Opposition Leader to rethink, reengage, and revisit what humiliates us nationally. ‘One Guyana’ can never be when outsiders are our solutions. Engagement and consultation will only mean something if we learn to trust one another. If we don’t, then what have we? I contend that it is not a country.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)