Dear Editor,
I cannot ignore the disgusting headlines in your newspaper over the last week. They include a plethora of violence, corruption, molestation, robbery and murder reflecting a total disregard for human life. What good news can there be for Guyana? These events exemplify the state of moral decay that has been plaguing Guyana for almost two decades. It is accompanied by a lack of opportunities and jobs, poor education, hopelessness, and disregard for the rule of law. Intrinsic to this mosaic of disrepair is the PPP government’s own political culture, moral decay and disregard for the legal system and laws of the land.
Why can’t the government develop and implement policies and programmes that can address these issues. Domestic violence has been out of control and yet nothing tangible is done but lip service. It appears that the government is not in control and some sections of society are powerless while others are very powerful.
Guyana has never had a leader of any philosophical ability to use wisdom in dealing with the political and economic state and the citizenry.
In the Republic Plato states, “I declare justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger… Tyranny is not a matter of minor theft and violence, but of wholesale plunder, sacred and profane, private or public. If you are caught committing such crimes in detail you are punished and disgraced; sacrilege, kidnapping, burglary, fraud, theft are the names we give to such petty forms of wrongdoing. But when a man succeeds in robbing the whole body of citizens and reducing them to slavery, they forget these ugly names and call him happy and fortunate, as do all others who hear of his unmitigated wrongdoing.” Lord Acton famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
If Plato is correct, “the plutocratic kind of state will decay when the children of the rich decide simply to enjoy themselves and dissipate their wealth, or when the poor decide to take advantage of their numbers by overthrowing the rich.” A democracy, according to Plato, is the rule of the people. Plato pays grudging respect to democracy as the “fairest, most beautiful” of constitutions. The principle of this state is the desire of the many. This is democratic in the sense that all desires are equally good, which means anything goes. Because the desires and possessions of some inevitably interfere with the desires and acquisitiveness of others, Plato thinks that “democracies will become increasingly undisciplined and chaotic. In the end, people will want someone to institute law and order and quiet things down. Giving sufficient power to someone to do that leads to the next kind of state.”
Who shall it be?
Yours faithfully,
Steve Hemraj