Dear Editor,
In a letter to SN on June 5 titled ‘The preamble to the Guyana constitution commits us to finding a system of governance which permits a “broad-based participation in national decision making”’ Mr Eusi Kwayana again advances an irresponsible demand for political power. Mr Kwayana is yet to embrace a workable federalism which accommodates the best course for all to decide their own futures united within a single country. What has fundamentally changed is not Mr Kwayana’s goals but his repackaging of this quest for political power by the PNC recalibrated within APNU. Could all this new wisdom now validate Dr Jagan’s PPP secret talks with the PNC in the 1980s?
It was Mr Ravi Dev’s seminal analysis “for a future peace” in his weekly column in the KN of June 10 which now preempts future prolonged acrimonious bickering to resolve this race standoff. What can be more exciting than Mr Dev’s refreshingly reassuring wisdom wherein he highlights that “in this narrative both ‘sides’ are morally right; the conflict is not between good and evil but between (the available now desirable) ‘goods’ on which each is making exclusive claim. Isn’t this the situation that our mutually exclusive narratives of victimhood with its facile binary oppositions have delivered us into? Such an emplotment within a narrative, I am suggesting, should suggest compromise rather than a battle of one side overcoming. That would be a constructive narrative for our time, place and circumstances.” Federalism must therefore effectively give each side the right to create more of their own entitlement and “goods” answering the hope of each being free at last.
If Mr Kwayana still offers the promise of a binding resolution in resorting to the 1980 Guyana constitution which is indeed the highest law of the land, it may be a good compromise step. In quoting the preamble, Mr Kwayana is actually equating it to the main body of its contents. Reliance on the preamble can hardly be the knockout punch with which Mr Kwayana hopes to convince his critics about the strength of his case. He can do better.
‘The tail of the elephant is not the entire elephant.’ In Mr Kwayana’s reliance on the preamble of Guyana’s constitution he needs to avoid grasping and hoisting himself and baggage with the elephant’s trunk onto its back to go for a ride. Mr Kwayana has long been aware that neither the trunk nor tusks at the front of the elephant make up the entire elephant. Often most rapid vehicles find them with their trunks in the rear. Now that he has positioned himself to frontally face the elephant he must keep in mind the behaviours and challenges of Guyana’s elephant(s). Our Guyana elephants are not easy to manage.
Yours faithfully,
Sultan Mohamed