Latest update May 13th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 17, 2020 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
I read that the coalition, all six components within it, have memorialized what they intend to prioritize, where they will go, and what they plan to deliver. As a supporter, there is not much to not like about this parchment of what could be the profound and the empowering. As a citizen, and a clinical and careful one at that, I pause and wait for the good things promised to come. May all of my fellow Guyanese get to share in the sensations of such bold successes envisioned and promised.
But they have to be of a texture that is genuinely intended, comprehensively delivered, physically measurable and found pleasing. I will give His Excellency and a few in his team high marks for good intentions and honest, far-reaching visions. I shrink from casting a wider net to encompass the bulk of his group. And there is that problem that is not going away. It was what made the predecessor government go away some five years ago, and who are now parked outside the door for a dreamed about shot at this the biggest of juicy, irresistible apples.
The problem-chronic and acute-is that there are so many comrades in the wings and the bowels of our political environment and climate, in the contours and configurations of our ramshackle political makeups that are hostile to the actual delivery of what is beneficial and wholesome for the mass of citizens. These comrades and supporters line up imagining, calculating, and drooling over the oil largesse to come. They can’t wait; they have no time, no interest, no intention of making those promises come to pass, be they of 50,000 jobs (the PPP), or 20,000 house lots (the PNC), or tens of thousands of scholarships (PPP again), and now free education all the way to advanced learning of university education (the PNC again).
I think that some of these things can be made possible; though possibly not to the degrees that have been bandied about, or in the time windows articulated. I urge a healthy dose of skepticism, which is good for mental and spiritual self-preservation. For it must be recognized that the middle name and DNA are inseparably associated with promises. In Guyana, political promises are made to be broken, and they have been, without a thought, without any care or remorse or explanation. There are no innocents here: not my own people, not the people who detest me, not those who proclaim their disinterest and disengagement. If only the latter were so….
I look at the compendium of manifestoes making the rounds in Guyana at this time, and I say to myself: if only…. If only, this could happen, this could materialize and be real in my lifetime, or that of those to come. These things, these lovingly produced, these glittering monuments to marketing craftsmanship, have to have meaning-at some level, with some persuasive power-if they are to be worth the paper on which printed, the breaths through which they were uttered. If not, then they are merely newer exercises in the timeless farces that have been perpetrated and perpetuated in this country forever, it seems.
I must be clear here: I would like to believe, but call me cynical, even condemn me to the ranks of the stupid. But because I want to see what is best for the lesser citizens of this society, and because I do not put my trust in earthly princes, I parse and plod forward at an uncharacteristic pedestrian pace. This is what the politics of this country can do to people; it has done so to me. Yet even as I take this stance, I discern in this latest manifesto something that is closer to the credible, nearer to the realistic, and mostly deliverable. Relatively speaking, of course. I will give the president and his team that much for what is closer to the wisdom of guarded commonsense, what could gain some traction.
I am willing to give his group (any group) in this country a hearing (but not much more) on their grand manifestoes. Then I proceed to ask this simple question: where are the people, who are going to make this work? And after that one other inquiry: where are the comrades in the inner circles, who are authentically dedicated to giving substance to the succulent symphonies embodied in this or that manifesto? Don’t show me any oil money just yet, as that is outside of the range of my interests. Just show me the people; the people of caliber, the people of character, the people who are of country and citizen and clean and incorruptible governance, and I am a believer. Show me them in the sufficiently swollen cohort of the uncompromised and uncompromising, and I commit to converting from political atheist to unswerving political believer. That is my promise.
I like many aspects of the coalition’s manifesto. I just don’t like, or have any regard, for many more of the people who would be responsible for making these promises grow with the definitions of muscular maturity. On this I am unmoving. And as that is contemplated, try this on: if this is the way I think and feel about my own people, then not much should be left to the imagination of how the other people measure up in my book of calculations.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
Listen how to run an oil country
May 13, 2024
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