Democracy – who would crave leading it

Oct 30, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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…Hard truths 

By GHK Lall 

(Democracy – who would crave leading it)

Kaieteur News –“The very workings of a democratic system sees to it that the job has very little power.” The identity of that speaker may surprise. He was onto something, though, considering that “job” of which he spoke, which is another surprise.

Guyanese have spoken to theory and what the dictionary say about democracy and autocracy.  Those have their merits, but there is nothing more meritorious than reality. Grim and gritty reality. Some leaders are at home working with a sledgehammer. The collision of sledgehammer and noncompliant citizen has only one party getting up from the canvas. After much use, the sledgehammer is all that leaders now come to appreciate for the final solutions that it offers.  Then, there are those leaders who avoid with foxlike cunning the straightforward, open air, brutality of the sledgehammer.

The preference of those leaders is for the stiletto. A stiletto can be concealed. It affords close quarter operations and damage. Less authoritative and frightening than a sledgehammer to be sure; but with just as much of the same blood-sapping finality. In fact, the stiletto is more versatile due to its subtlety, delivers more lasting results. In Guyanese lingo, the small axe brings down the big tree. In the context of Guyana’s so-called democracy, the governmental and leadership stiletto is busy at work. In the right hands, with capable minds, so much is achieved without much sweat springing. And, best of all, nobody knows what went on until much later, often never.

Like that quote at the beginning said so truly, so wisely, when the organs and institutions and systems of democracy are fulfilling their roles, then the power of presidents and political princes are harnessed, brought in line. Whether prime ministers or plenipotentiaries, private enterprise principals or peasants of no standing, genuine democracy at work functions as that constraining hand. All-powerful leaders are subdued to lesser strengths. Reckless governments are held to account. Those who resist answering must provide answers, like it or not.

By my thinking and reckoning, by my conclusions, the democracy claimed to be in operation at high gear in Guyana is not so much of the sledgehammer variety. The white people are watching, so that wouldn’t do. The Guyana democracy so-called and so-so possesses all the components of the stiletto in operation, in one place after another, with one production process crowding on the heels of the other in what is an assembly line culture.

The office of prosecutions has earned a dubious distinction. The arbiter of the people is mostly seen as a partner in what is in line with the expectations of those with the power. So, I see, so I think. What passes through with the proper robustness to the next level, what is rejected, with the sanitation scrutiny and value of daylight pushed into oblivion. The office of accounting knows how to tailor its scope, where to look and from which smoking guns to keep a safe distance.  Commissions, be they of permanency or the unavoidable inconvenience of temporary inquiry, know their lines and follow the line. Most of the hand-picked sturdy sons and daughters of Guyana’s soil represent and project what leaders expect of them. Then they outdo themselves.  When these are functioning, there is more than a sense of comfort, there is that proof that cannot be bettered, cannot be challenged.

For starters, leaders are limited. They can say and do much, but not much more; especially those practices that wander into murky realms, scurrilous and putrid places. Second, leaders do not exhibit the unbridled arrogance that has become so commonplace. Because they are genuinely working and delivering systems of checks and balances that are so vital for a democracy to be stamped credible, perform as they should and deliver as they must.

Because the auditors themselves are audited by sacred, the force of invisible but very audible public judgment.  The police is policed properly and fearlessly.  The judiciary, regardless of whether its decisions are agreed with or not, is afforded its space, its inviolable operational base.  It may be only one or two decisions condemned.

But were those decisions about stealing a phone or endangering the future, possibly bankrupting the destiny of the Guyanese people.  When the mandatory partnership of the Fourth Estate is hacked away at piece by piece, then for what purpose is the only question left?  The media has its mission, and it is not to parrot perversities, but what approaches professionalism that is pleasing, what presents the public with what sometimes hurts, but always helps.

Unlike the other national places and spaces specified, the work of law enforcement and the media are in the glare of blinding spotlights.  When government and leaders are emboldened to ditch the stiletto (well-used in the other places) and come heavily armed with the sledgehammer to demolish the media and devastate the Guyana Police Force, there is the proof.  The government is in the face of the independent media at every opportunity.  It loses face when newer and more obscene developments emerge from the national organization that stands between clean governance and a corrupt and chaotic society.  Well, fellow Guyanese, what sayest thou?

Taken all the above into consideration, this is how the blabber about transparency and accountability becomes an obscenity.  When the bulwarks, when the checks and balances, when the men and women in sensitive institutions deliver as they should, then the Guyana Government, Guyana’s leaders, do not have anywhere near the sly power, the naked and raw power, that they have arrogated unto themselves.  Presidents are subject to democracy’s discipline.  So too, are governments.  Guyanese must have the honesty to be their own check, contemplation, then conclude.  Thus, democracy is further balanced, brought to book, accountable to the people, through the constitutional roadblocks in place, and operating at impeccable standards. The owner of the words quoted in the opening paragraph was an American.  A one-time commander-in-chief, before that a Supreme Commander.  He was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

(Democracy – who would crave leading it)

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• democracy and autocracy, democratic system, dictionary, sledgehammer, sweat springing

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