There is a cauldron in the middle of the nation. Today, it is a brooding presence that simmers restlessly. Yet towering political ostriches see tolerance and beyond, even progress; such is the soothing cocoon of mud in which necks are buried.
This is the smoothest revision yet of the tension between the races, unveiled by the high-powered, white-shoe marketing enterprise called Jagdeo, Bharrat and Jagdeo. It is one smooth job; political taxidermy on steroids.
Wisely, nobody is buying; especially those familiar with Shaw’s “common sense is instinct, lots of it genius.” It is so because the nation hears a rigid avoidance of the truth, and hostility to the nakedness of reality. The truth and reality in which the situation – the divide – is worse than before. On the one side, it is believed that today’s government supporters betrayed the PNC after professing allegiance to it; that the PPP are unworthy rulers; and that its people embrace wrongdoing incarnate. On the other, this said group of people retreats from imagined and real dread, fears the spectre of a return and its implications, and stands resolute in thwarting at all costs. This is the baleful rift valley of progress; the divide endlessly instigated and exploited by both sides bent on retaining, or regaining, power. The man himself inferred this before showcasing more Orwellian delights.
“There is political divide and… that’s the competitive nature of politics.” Not so long ago, division was the work of a handful of extremists; today it is pronounced an acceptable political standard. On the one issue with potential for destruction, the leader’s message is tantamount to: It works for us, now live with it. Just the way it is; so get with the programme and move on. It is alright to exploit for one’s advantage. Everybody does it. Clearly, this is a man – and a party – heavily involved in the marketing (propaganda) business, and engaged on occasion only in a little governing and leading on the side.
“So the political divide will always be there.” In other words, don’t look to me to go against the tide. Instead of the inspiration and steeliness of: “This cannot continue, I will take the lead; I will commit political capital; and I will dedicate presidential energies and prestige to start a new thinking,” there is the equivalent of a pathetic, “Don’t look to me for answers, and I am not touching this.” Perhaps, there is a reassuring message embedded for the concerned faithful: don’t worry; nothing will ever be done to relinquish the hold on power as it stands. Joyce said “errors are the portals of discovery.” In Guyana, they are a celebration of all that has failed. It is palpable from the striking mindset of a head of state enthusiastic about building bridges to neighbours, cooling the cabin of the sky, and seeking to save the world, but who seemingly lacks soul and conviction on one of the gravest of all national questions.
Not surprisingly, the President continues to patronize and lull with palatable language, and rejects commitment to hard choices and earnest approaches. It is the sometimes forgotten world of the many guns, available mercenaries, and many competing teams, which can punctuate the divide in more thunderous and sanguinary terms. Against this harrowing backdrop, the purposeful men behind the racial gravitational pull take refuge inside the political divide. Unsaid is that no effort will be spared to keep things this way through the frisson of tension and shards of unspeakable danger. Gone is any pretended national view now lost in the implacable parochial – and racial – truth of “it will always be there.”
Separately, all will agree that progress on this most demanding of matters does not rest with the president alone. But when the issue is urgent and calamitous enough, real leaders reach deep and lead from the front with vision, and unswerving determination.
They break with the past and present and blaze new ground, even when it is the thorniest and least understood of endeavours. They advance ahead of their time, never content to be mere period figures. Hippocrates “healing is a matter of time, but it is also sometimes a matter of opportunities.” Real leaders seek opportunities and sometimes snatch them from nothing. This maestro, however, thrills to his own trumpet.
“I’m very pleased with how far we’ve come.” This is how far we have travelled, when from the heart and within, there are fears and anxieties over brethren adored, but never fully trusted. Think of how threatening this could be on the pathways shared by unfriendly, momentary strangers. Only disdain greets such contrarian observations, for there is great pleasure in the counsel of self and all of its delusional excursions. “The mind is in its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n,” Milton from Paradise Lost. Hence the political divide (heav’n) continues to exist because it adds up nicely with nothing to subtract. The leaders like it this way, and the president’s posture could not be clearer.
Like Ethelred the Unready, there is immobility of the spirit, and a practised political frigidity. When leadership of the highest calibre is demanded, there is only the cavalcade of those adrift and lacking. That’s the sound of washing hands, but all the presidential dross and floss in Guyana will not sanitize or comfort. Or make this divided house stand.
