Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 17, 2020 Editorial
The hits keep on coming and they are all for the thrill and enormous highs of Guyanese. As documents go, these political manifestoes are near flawless in the perfection of their patented promises. Such is this latest one from the coalition, this self-proclaimed “contract…an agreement with the people” in the words of a leader, fits the bill. Promises! Promises! Promises! Now only if they could be made, regardless of the political origin, to come alive, if only partially…how infinitely better this land of ours would be.
As should be known, we at this publication have not endorsed, and do not intend to endorse, any political group, or market any one manifesto, over another. This is a public admission and expression of our disillusionment with what we have had. Yet, we are only human and, we, too, must confess. We confess that-after listening to, reading about, and absorbing the stirring pronouncements of our fiercely competing parties-there is so much that is being offered, so much being sold, so much being promised that we have to summon every fiber in our grasp to stay steady, to avoid being bowled over. Such is the swooning that comes from these manifestoes. Remember: we are skeptical.
For if the politics of promises was a marriage proposal, we-all Guyana-would be falling to pieces in uncontrolled delighted dreaminess at the visions held out, the splendid pictures painted for us, the ones being wooed and courted. It is enough to make Guyanese men and women, even those of abiding faith and deep spiritual callings, forget God and heaven and the paradise promised to be restored. For all those, (God, heaven, and paradise) are right here and right now, as incorporated in these sweepingly powerful presentations.
Look at them, as presented by old and new, these manifestoes have something for everyone, and then still something left over. Because, if only some of these promises and hand-over-heart commitments embedded in the surging, soaring manifestoes unveiled were to be delivered and experienced by the great yearning multitudes of Guyana, then the celestial would have visited the citizens of this country and left an irreversible and irrefutable imprint on their existences. But these things have to come alive to mean something, through the essences of their tangible being.
For if only a mere seventy five percent of the promises carved out in those manifestoes (from any comer) were to be realized, then even the sky would not be limiting anymore, since a rising Guyanese tide would have lifted to and then pierced through that high restraining bar. We say this and believe this, because if only 75 percent of the billions involved in these visions and programmes were to be made possible in clean and constructive substance (workable and enjoyable substance), then the possibilities for Guyanese would be endless, the realities prosperously overflowing.
And for those wondering why seventy five percent performance standard, we say that history and pragmatism and that indefinable ingredient called human nature-perverse human nature-must be accounted for and recognized in the sprawling swirl of numbers making the rounds. As for those who, taking this situation to its numerical limits, inquire about the remaining twenty five percent, that is the allowance made for the caprices and follies of the Guyanese political, professional, and criminal animal. After all our experiences and traumas and disappointments, there ought to be universal recognition that that animal represents the convergence, the seamless merger, of all three formidable and much feared sectors in this country.
Political manifestoes aside, and with oil windfalls cascading, twenty five percent of billions is enough to choke the hugest herd of horses. It should keep the herd of hustlers occupied in their non-manifesto artifices, like contented pigs cavorting gleefully in the rich swill of money to make men mad, while Guyanese get something for all the anguish through which they have lived with one political group after another, in one dismal decade following on the heels of the one before.
It is why we say that seventy five percent delivery would make a difference. To be sure, we would like 100 percent fulfillment of these inspired and sure to inspire manifestoes. But we must be sensible and cautious and real.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
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