Currently, certain set routines have come to encompass the totality of civil discontent. On the one hand, there are letters and columns in the printed media on various issues; they flay the government for its universe of failures. Additionally, television has its share of shows and critics where there is similar articulation of dissonance. On the other hand, the government welcomes and seizes every opportunity to respond through defensive propagations using both state and private conduits. Taken together, citizens and government exchanges have come to assume the spectacle of debating Olympics, at the end of which everyone packs up, goes home, and returns tomorrow for another iteration in the war of words and battle of personalities. In other words, national discontent and agony have been reduced to the caricature of winning, or losing, sometimes pointless arguments; of bandying with words through the gnashing of teeth. Most important, these displays and paper contests suit the government just fine, since at the end of the endless posturing and talking and writing, it remains unmoved and as contemptuous as ever of the national constituent, including its supporters.
For its part, the government has comparatively endless resources, tools, and agents to engage and pontificate. It also wants to keep things this way, and relishes these engagements for the proliferation of its deceptions. Because of this atmosphere, the government never feels pushed enough to be compelled to make any durable concessions, or to change its evil ways. Not once; not on any matter. Rather, it has artfully seized every opportunity to perpetuate subtle falsehoods, split hairs, obfuscate, ignore and omit, as part of a coherent strategy to overwhelm or frustrate conscientious objectors into submission and withdrawal. Meanwhile, on the periphery, a mass of people, mainly poor, struggle with the wrenching demands of daily survival.
However, this is the comfortable zone where private writers, speakers, representatives, and thinkers are marooned. None is ready to go in another direction, to employ escalating pressure in pursuit of respect and betterment. This is true of the official opposition, unelected opposition, civil society, and the brigades of disenchanted. Everyone looks at the next group, or next person, to signal the first step, to carry the flag. When, more than ever before in the nation’s history, there is the dire need for a new kind of agitation, and an intensifying degree of objection, there is only impenetrable apathy. This is the milieu that allows the government a smirking contentment, as it knows that the next step is highly unlikely. It is secure because of the frightening apparitions that still roam the fragile street.
Yes, the ugly history of earlier times haunts, petrifies, and inculcates uncertainty. Yes, every agitation in the street was an opportunity for crass intimidation and other vile forms of banditry with an ethnic focus. Yes, the ruling was quick to exploit this Achilles heel and ruptured hamstring of the opposition, whether major or manufactured. Now no one seems to have a clue – or the will – about how to exorcise the fear, and the gleeful powers are only too willing to assist in maintaining this state. Whereas the government could not care less about collateral damage inflicted on anyone, there is the irony of an opposition concerned about collateral consequences; and their unforgiving interpretations and ramifications. Thus, the indiscipline and atrocities of yesterday now cripple. It paralyzes the veterans, and it restricts the thinkers from revisiting approaches characterized by horrendous misdirection. Now, when a movement is needed, no one can think beyond a mob. The government knows this, and knows that its adversaries know that it knows.
Hence, there is the convenience of continuous media gamboling within the doldrums of immovability. Yet, having said this, all is not lost. Just as history houses horror stories, it also furnishes precedents and guidance. The precedents are from the Black struggle in the American South, and the Indian resistance across the subcontinent. Together, they provide all the local guidance needed.
It is one of cogent leadership, inexhaustible discipline, and unyielding patience. The dogs, the water cannon, the batons, the jails, and the racist officials, in aggregate, could not crack the resolve of suffering and downtrodden peoples longing for improvement. No one confronted; none retaliated. Rage was bowed head and back, let the lash descend. Invasion was overflowing the jails. Intimidation was the chant of hymns and anthems in the face of spittle and rocks and human venom. These were the rallying cries and indelibly enduring images from a time of sacrifice, when the course of history was altered in two places; when transcendent leadership reigned. Why not in this remote, inconsequential, sometimes indiscoverable place called Guyana? This place that is ours; this land that is my land? Why has the time not come for the determined organization and sustained commitment to non-violent, non-threatening expression of a nation’s anguish before the cameras, before observers, before Guyanese of any persuasion, and of all hues? Why not and why not now?
Mobilize the streets with peace; touch the television screens with pain experienced; crowd the jails with freedom from want; and burden the courts with injustice expressed. And all the time, let the oppressors understand the extent of a people’s misery. Show countrymen and the world that to hope is human; that the powerful and unheeding can be made to listen and respond. That it can be done without violence and without fear. And that it must be implemented and achieved outside of pen and paper, and away from the academic armchairs in the mental resorts constructed and so loved.
