Useful as they are, dictionaries are inadequate when we are trying to define certain intangibles. The words in the Oxford Concise may be correct as far as they go, but they sometimes cannot begin to convey the full picture. Try to define the word ‘character,’ for example. One can come at it from a number of angles, but because the condition rests on so many aspects, almost all of them subjective, a definition you can write down, even after laborious thought and revision, does not satisfy. The interesting thing, however, and this is my point here, is that we know character when we see it, and furthermore, indeed, it is often through circumstances affecting people, public or private, that their true character becomes known to us.
In my time in Grand Cayman, for example, I came to know a Caymanian man, Ormond Panton, a retired politician/lawyer, who would be close to the top of the list of the most remarkable people I have met. Mister Ormond (I could never bring myself to refer to him any other way) was a man of unusual courage and vision, jousting for his country’s independence from Britain, going up against the establishment in the process, losing clients from his law firm as a result, and holding fast to his principles with a ferocity that was singular and never waned for all the days he lived.
At the height of his political popularity there in the 1960s, Mister Ormond stood up to British governors in a time when such behaviour was rare even in large countries in the region; in the tiny Cayman Islands, then with a population of some 15,000, it sent shock waves through the community. I ended up writing the man’s biography, A Special Son, and to read that book is to understand what character is.
Prior to that, in the 1980s, having been engaged by the Guyana Commemoration Commission to write a musical play for the 150th anniversary of full Emancipation, I spent some time talking with Mavis John, a lady of some years in Buxton, whose great-grandfather, Jungu, had arrived as a slave on one of the last slave ships to come to Guyana.
Mavis told me this astonishing story of her grandmother having to work late in the estate manager’s house, and of her grandfather, annoyed at this practice recurring, going over to the manager’s house, in the middle of the day, and declaring, “Manager, if you want my wife to work late you have to send your wife to keep me company.” For Jungu, a recently freed slave, to take such a bold position with the overlord tells you a lot about the man’s character.
In that context, it struck me recently that in fact, we are now in a set of circumstances in this country where we are going to learn about the character of many of the people who have been placed in our Parliament in a configuration quite unlike anything this country has ever seen.
The playing out of this scenario, in very public view, of a President sitting in a Parliament, where his party is outnumbered by the coalesced opposition, is going to mean that the normal ruling party dictates will not be operating in Guyana, and the reigning manoeuvring for consensus, by its very nature, is going to require exemplary people, people of character, for the governing process to work. Ultimately, leaders will emerge from this process, and within the elapsed time of this government, we will have learned a great deal about these Guyanese we have selected to represent us.
We will find out who among this group are statesmen, or stateswomen, and who are not. The process is going to reveal to us whose word is their bond and who cannot be trusted. We are going to see in whom resolve, and restraint, and tolerance resides, and in whom such qualities are absent. We are going to see where there is mental and moral strength, and where egos or selfishness rule.
Such are the circumstances that the election process has left us, and while it is certainly going to be intensive and taxing in the Parliament, it will also be absorbing to watch from the outside.
Indeed, for the dramatist, the political engagement that is opening here, has all the ingredients of gripping theatre – the actors, the resolution of conflicts, the ability to persuade, the major personalities; it is all here – in a plot we have not encountered before.
As we have already seen in the early days, on the matter of the selection of a Speaker, it will be a revealing time. It will be the making of some and the unmasking of others in what is likely to be the most exciting and productive period in our country’s political history.
At the end of it, whenever that is, we will know considerably more about who our political people really are – what is their character, in effect – than we now know. Additionally, and not incidentally, we will also have learned much about ourselves.
