Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 11, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
A woman’s husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, yet she stayed by his bedside every single day.
When he came to, he motioned for her to come nearer.
As she sat by him, he said, “You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house, you gave me support. When my health started failing, you were still by my side… You know what?”
“What dear?” She asked gently.
“I think you are a cross.”
One of the best pieces of advice that I like to give young people is about who to associate with. My rule of thumb is that if when you are in the company of someone you feel depressed, then that is someone to stay away from.
If on the other hand, when you leave someone you feel enlivened, inspired or touched, then that is someone that you should meet again.
There is nothing wrong with picking one’s friends. The President of Guyana has his friends. The whole country knows who they are and what economic class they belong to. That is his right. If he feels good hanging around them, then he should be glad that he has found the right friends.
What is good about friendship is however not the same about politics. Politicians cannot pick and choose what they are going to listen to in the same way as they pick and choose their friends. A good leader has to be open to criticism and to see value in those who offer something different from the steady pat on the back.
Good leaders have to be weary of being surrounded by yes men and sycophants, persons who tell them what they want to hear but hardly ever tell them the truth. These are the types that leaders have to beware of because they care more about their own positions than about the security of the leaders.
Machiavelli, whose philosophy dealt with the practicalities – as opposed to the idealism – of politics, established a test by which a leader can judge those that surround him.
“When you see the servant thinking more of his own interests than of yours, and seeking inwardly his own profit in everything, such a man will never make a good servant, nor will you ever be able to trust him; because he who has the state of another in his hands ought never to think of himself, but always of his prince, and never pay any attention to matters in which the prince is not concerned.
But Machiavelli also warned his leader against the dangers of surrounding himself with flatterers. He insisted that the only defence a leader has against flatterers is to let men know that the truth would not offend the leader and to encourage them to speak freely.
Thus Machiavelli advised the prince to choose the wise men in his state and give to them only the liberty of speaking the truth.
He urges the prince to question his advisers on everything and listen to their opinions and afterwards form his own conclusions.
The President of Guyana whenever his administration is faced with a crisis has an uncanny habit of retreating behind curtains that block out criticism. In this retreat, the President likes to resort to a fall back. Instead of addressing in a frank and open manner the criticism that he faces, the President, especially when in the company of the captains of commerce and industry, takes refuge in saying that he only surrounds himself with positive people or those who have a positive outlook in life.
This is how the serious criticisms over matters of State are deflected. They are categorized as negativity and labeled as originating from those who do not have a positive outlook.
There is however a name for this deflection. It is called denial.
We are in the midst of The Great Denial in Guyana. The allegations of widespread corruption are treated with contempt. Instead of acknowledging the problem, there is a retreat into denial, and to treat these concerns as being the handiwork of those who are not positive and are harming the image of the country through this negative portrayal.
The problem with denial is that it does not remove the problem, and in the end what happens is that the problem grows to such gargantuan proportions that it consumes even those who are retreating from its existence through the medium of denial. To live in denial is to perish in it.
Jagdeo giving Exxon 102 cent to collect 2 cent.
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