Teachers: have a conscience

Feb 18, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – “Teachers have to have a responsibility too.  We have to be fair.  We have to have a conscience, we can’t allow ourselves to become political pawns.”  The speaker was Guyana’s head of state.  In any general context, those words have their merits.  But they do not have one-sided application.  They cut both ways.  Every sentence.  Every phrase.  Those projecting such postures, saying such reasonable and appealing things, should know that they must be embraced by the ones putting them on the table, to be accepted by the ones to whom they are directed. Embraced and exemplified.  In what is balanced.  What receives a nod of approval in that the same calls, the identical standards, are also practiced in other areas and aspects of Guyanese life.  I now sift through and dissect the president’s words, as quoted above.

It should be noticed that Guyana’s president isn’t referred to by name.  It is a consequence of diminished expectations, disturbing evaluations of his record.  No amount of bluster can plaster over his presidential errors of judgment, the egregious voids in his national stewardship.  Out of deference for the constitutional office of the presidency, I address the issues quietly, humbly and, most of all, genuinely.  The president has fallen victim to his own potions of parsimony to perceived adversaries, on the one hand, and plenty to the friendly, on the other.  He said that “teachers have to have a responsibility too.”  I completely agree, sir.  But the rudiments of that responsibility, the first specks that grow into a sterling pillar, start with the head.  The Government of Guyana is not a ruthless corporate entity (a punishing foreign one) determined to walk on the backs of the locals, and wringing every concession out of them.  No! the government has a responsibility to be more listening to the wails of its women, the fears of its men, who see how other citizens are cared for, and how they are catered to, propped up, strengthened.  Responsibility, Mr. President, is not a one-handed affair.

“We have to be fair”.  Agreed.  Clearly, this wise national leader considers the high double-digits provisions (close to and upwards of 50%) budgeted for certain sectors in Guyana as fair.  And, for some curious strain of reasoning, he also concludes that single digit percentages of charity (6.5%) as the essence of what is “fair” for the people he lectures about what it is “to be fair”.  I couldn’t suppress the thought that the president was heckling striking teachers, playing some sort of callous game.  It is my painful duty to inform His Excellency that earlier goodwill has evaporated.  He squandered such.  Platitudes have lost any potencies that they may have once had.  His word games are transparent in their essences: words only, with no meaning, and nothing else.

The president threw down the gauntlet before teachers: “we have to have a conscience.”  Well said, captain.  It is good to hear someone at the high elevation of national leader suddenly speaking of conscience.  I am glad for the company, since it was admittedly mighty lonely talking about “conscience” in this country, and wondering whether it would ever be found.  Welcome to this most rarified of territories, Mr. President.  Conscience can never be associated with 6.5%, and as handed down as if beggars were the recipients.  Conscience would and could never be mistaken for being at work in an economy that is at wave-topping heights, when there is the stinginess of what has been extended to teachers and the wider realm of public servants versus the lavishness delivered to other segments of Guyanese society.  But I sense more than stinginess.  I discern meanness.  The politics of 2018-2020 triumphs over the quality of governing called for in this new era in Guyana’s existence.  Meanness and vindictiveness have become the norm, I submit, Mr. President.  I believe that a two-word term captures the caliber of governance and leadership that have become the chief characteristics of this Oil Dorado, this new Guyana.  With the honorable attorney general’s permission, I think that depraved indifference is what has featured most prominently, most inarguably.  The president and his army may object (furiously).  The constitutional right is still exercised.

Said the president in what he must have believed was a soaring flight of insight, “we cannot allow ourselves to become political pawns.”  In one breath, the leader urges “conscience”, and in the next, he reduces that to ashes.  Teachers are in pain, and to pin the label of “political pawns” on their backs, only adds to their trauma.  When the president waxed brightly about “fair” and “conscience” he could be listened to, no matter how difficult.  When the president insists on introducing the copyrighted curse of “political pawns” into the discourse about pay, then his pretenses are seen through.  Political pawns just slammed a door shut in the face of striking Guyanese teachers crying out for bread.  Is the president trying to tell this nation that the only nonpolitical presence in this country is he and his party?  I suggest that he polish that clouded lens, and look at himself in the mirror.  Some effort should be made to ensure that it is not one made of stained glass.

“Responsibility” and “fair” and “conscience,” begin at the top.  If not, only hypocrisy and heartlessness, maybe even obtuseness, prevail.

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• .  Every sentence, “Teachers have to have a responsibility too, President, responsibility, The Government of Guyana

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