Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:38 AM
Feb 05, 2020 Editorial
The Ethnic Relations Commission struggles in its roles to maintain the peace, keep things calm, search for acceptable balance. It is an uphill task in the hysteria and madness; it is a losing battle, since nobody is listening. No side is even pretending at lip service, since to do so would appear weak, as though yielding precious yardage, and thus must stay the course that only promises to unravel this society still more.
Some have called for getting rid of the ERC, which is not altogether unconstructive, but merely an indication of recognition that it is reduced to a toothless poodle barking at shadows, while failing to move its political objects through puny chastisements and feeble exhortations.
As well-intentioned as those disgusted calls are for the disbanding of the ERC, it is the position of this paper, that it is better to have a watchman with a torchlight and nightstick on the job than none at all. We understand clearly and fully that its main constituency, if it can be called that, the hostile and aggressive political groups, are determined and possess at their disposal arsenals that easily overwhelm the ERC’s weak presence and its limited deterrence intent. But if there is no ERC, then there is nothing.
There is no sanity check, however circumscribed that may be. There is no civility in a land now increasingly overrun by coarse and vulgar Huns, barbarians, and assorted verbal, symbolic, and budding vandals. When there are adversaries like these in the mix, there is great potential for lack of control, for the floodgates to collapse, for the worst of impulses to run amok and reign supreme, to the detriment of all.
As this society prepares feverishly, at least the warring political tribes, one thing has become very clear to this publication. It is that there will be no winner, regardless of which party emerges triumphant. For, once again, any existing social ambience and any already stressed racial tolerance have evaporated. In the aftermath of ferocious elections tussles, the Guyanese people as a group lose. There are only pieces to pick up, and that is what the ERC is trying to hold together in a vain attempt to prevent from getting to that ugly, devastating stage.
It is forbidding vision and prospect, but there is not much else on which to grasp, is there? Because whoever wins and extends the offer of olive branches will be hated and denounced and dismissed out of hand, and with the most visceral of intensities.
This is the Pandora’s Box that we nurture at this time, and it seems every time, except that on this occasion, the oil has made lunatics and fanatics of even the usually sober-minded. Temperateness and prudence have almost vanished, with celebrations in anticipation of more of the same to be unleashed.
This is what the paltry ERC comes up against, the groundswell that is a tsunami of tortures for an electorate rooted and cultivated in malice, in the toxic, in the destructive. The ERC is not and cannot be the antidote against the swarms that are representative of our own homegrown coronavirus that is of a political and not viral variety. This is said, though its reach is viral and its effect no less lethal.
The one ingredient that held the strains of some hope, of some respite, of some comfort, is missing. There are some thin numbers, but the requisite bulk is simply not there and so, too, is the interest and following and commitment that matters be different.
The heinous Mr. Hyde is our nature’s rise to the fore and with strength and vigour. That missing essence is the presence of a viable centre. There are the new political groups, but most are not listening to them and observe them as objects of curiosity, if not untimely distractions. That is most regrettable, since so many had cried for change and those who would and could make a difference.
The current environment and upcoming results should prove whether we are truly conscientious and about country, or only the usual crocodilian hypocrites which art has been mastered. The ERC hobbles, it is handicapped, but it is all we have.
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