Choosing what kind of government we want to govern us as a people is the whole point of free and fair, democratic national elections.
What kind of government do we want?
Each party campaigns to win the hearts and minds of voters, presenting its plans, and urging voters to disregard the others.
Elections see political parties compete for power. Whoever forms the government gains power to determine how the public money gets spent.
This inherent nature of democracy – to foster frenzied competition for the single seat of Head of State, and for the power to determine how the public Treasury is managed – creates an atmosphere of division.
A party stooped in frantic fund-raising, suddenly through democratic elections, could in a day become manager of billions of dollars through the State Treasury.
There could only be one winner, and the winner determines everything.
This elections campaign season started out with reason and good sense. We saw some of the leaders calling for reconciliation, forgiveness and a reaching out across all divides.
But the campaigns started to become rather nasty, and now voters have to contend with daily cross-accusations, finger-pointing and a perpetual lashing out at each other.
The ruling party this week came out with State-media driven vitriol that two opposition parties plan to merge after the elections, insinuating that this is a major cause for concern.
The opposition parties have become reactionary, and seem bent on opposing everything the ruling party says or does.
The campaigns seem to be descending into the petty, gross and highly divisive rhetoric that voters would want to shun.
In the end, the population becomes demoralized, distrustful of political solutions and wary of the party that governs them. The result is, of course, low voter turnout.
These elections offer any Party of visionary leaders a golden opportunity to engage the population of this country, to re-write how the public space functions, to inject vision and hope into the hearts and minds of people: people who wake up every day to face a country still in the throes of under-development and widespread poverty.
With 65 percent of the voters on November 28 being young people, so much is at stake. We owe it to future generations to get this right.
What kind of governance do we deserve as a people?
This newspaper publishes the work of economic analysts Christopher Ram and Professor Clive Thomas, and the picture they paint is not pretty. They analyze objectively, and look only to contribute to the building up of the nation.
Yet, the ruling party labels them “opposition”. We see every act of objective, expert analysis as “opposing”. People become fed-up hearing this sort of politicking nonsense. This fostering of division accomplishes nothing of value.
The people of this country want a government – and they deserve it – that respects good governance; cares that every penny of State-funds is spent with prudence and sound accountability; is transparent and open; that respects the ordinary workers; that opens the State-owned media to their voices; that develops equality of opportunity for economic, social and career advancement; and that listens to the voters after Elections Day.
Guyana deserves good government that is accountable and fair, where every individual has access to a professional justice system.
We stand at a juncture in our history, and we the ordinary people, the voters, could make a defining difference as to the kind of nation we present to the world.
The voters could choose whether to demand good governance that lifts us to our potential in the 21st century global village, or to not really care.
The sad fact is that the average voter may feel helpless, and vent this hopelessness in refusing to cast a vote. Voter apathy is a real phenomenon in this country. This apathy is fuelled by the poor leadership they see on the elections campaign circuit.
People want to see new vision. They want the leaders to lift their hearts in patriotic pride for being Guyanese. They want to watch party leaders on TV, or listen to them on the radio, or to walk away from a public political meeting, and feel empowered, motivated and inspired, lifted up. The people want their leaders to show them their potential and their value as a Guyanese nation.
They deserve governance that is compassionate and refuses to allow even one citizen to fall through the social cracks.
This is the kind of government this nation wants.
“History is made before our eyes, at every moment, every hour”, Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish writer said in his stunning book, ‘Imperium’, an account of Soviet communism leading up to Mikhail Gorbachev.
This author demonstrates in his book what a historical moment means. This is our chance, as Guyanese, to define our history as a people come November 28. We cannot allow voter apathy to dictate inaction.
Kapuscinski shows the intense impact of apathy and inaction that symbolized daily life in Soviet society, with a telling quote at the end of his book.
Millions and millions of people died in Soviet-style governance, brutally treated under inhumane governance, and the public said nothing. People felt helpless, and retreated into docile apathy.
Kapuscinski quotes the Russian writer Anton Chekhov in 1890 saying that “…we have let millions of people rot in prison, destroying them carelessly, thoughtlessly, barbarously; we drove people in chains through the cold across thousands of miles, infected them with syphilis, depraved them … who are to blame … but all of us, yet this is no concern of ours. We are not interested”.
In a democratic culture, voters choose the kind of government they want. We must be concerned, be interested, be passionate, about what kind of government we choose. For voters hold the power to demand accountability from the government they elect to govern them.
Not being concerned or interested to exercise this civic responsibility makes us culpable for bad governance, and for injustice against citizens, and for a society of wasted generations.
It is time for each voter to care for the kind of government that governs this nation, for those who hold power must be held accountable.
