The arson which took place in Linden on Friday simply cannot be excused. It would be fatuous to point out that the burning of buildings will do nothing for the economy of the mining town, and economic conditions are one of the underlying issues fuelling the protest. And it would be similarly pointless to observe that the destruction of public (and private) structures will only make recovery there more difficult, not less so. After all, what drives acts of destruction is anger or rank lawlessness, not reason. It is just that the rest of the nation finds it very difficult to understand why, when by all accounts negotiations with the government were making progress, critical buildings were torched by the very people who have most to lose by doing so. Just what was the objective of such incendiarism? Or was it that there simply was no objective, it was just nihilism in action?
This does not mean to say that while the government cannot be held directly responsible for the torching of buildings and toll booths, it must not take its share of the blame for creating the kinds of conditions which made what happened on Friday a distinct possibility, if not a probability. If nothing else its actions – or at some points, its lack of them – have provided fodder for those of its critics who are convinced that it would not be averse to seeing Linden in flames, because that would harmonise well with the line it has been pushing to its constituency for so long.
There are conflicting accounts about the origins of what happened in Linden, although the authorities have insisted that there was no Joint Services operation to clear blockades in the early hours of Friday morning, and the burning, therefore, could not have been triggered by that. The very least that can be said at this stage is that there were rumours circulating of the reinforcement of Joint Services personnel and of a curfew being issued. The trouble with these situations always is that they do fuel rumour, and one would have thought that the government would have been aware of this and would have operated with more caution in word, if not in deed.
As it is, the administration does not seem to appreciate how its own actions had a role to play in raising tensions, and in fact fed the protestors’ perception that the Joint Services could be expected to descend at any minute. It might be worth reminding the OP that the problem began on Monday during and after President Ramotar’s address to the National Toshaos Conference, when he told reporters that he had asked the Joint Services to take some initiatives to clear the roads. It doesn’t matter how tactful his phraseology; everyone knows that barring a negotiated agreement there is only one way at the moment to clear the roads in Linden, and that is by force.
Now it so happens, that the President was probably not directing his comments at Lindeners on that occasion; he was talking to an Amerindian constituency, many members of which have been adversely affected by the blockade, and he wanted to sound as if he was doing something about the problem. Unfortunately for him, this is the 21st century, and any message intended for one group will be heard by everyone else at the same time, as happened in this case. What the Lindeners absorbed from that speech and subsequent comments to the press, therefore, was that they should be on standby for the Joint Services moving on the blockades. So the first intimation last week that the army had again been given instructions to clear the roads emanated not from any private radio groupings as the OP alleged, but whether or not unintentionally, from the Head of State himself.
This was followed by two bizarre occurrences – or at least the second of them was bizarre, and the first simply ill advised. On Tuesday, the President issued an open letter to Lindeners, appealing to them to halt their protest and saying that they were being led astray by “extremists.” “This is not a love affair,” remarked Mr Moses Nagamootoo drily, “this is not ‘dear Jane and John,’ this is a political engagement…” It was indeed an extraordinary way to proceed considering – as many commentators including Mr Nagamootoo observed – that the President has not even shown his face in Linden since the shootings. It would be difficult for him to do so at this point admittedly, but he will not help himself by writing an open letter underlining the fact that he is afraid to go to the town and will only talk to its residents long distance. And it is not as if either he did not have the opportunity to speak to the injured who were brought down to the Georgetown Hospital; it would not have been satisfactory but it would have been better than nothing.
And then there is the matter of the contents of the government’s propaganda – the open letter not excluded. Given its target audience it is almost guaranteed to produce the opposite effect of the one desired, quite apart from the fact that no one in Linden has any trust in the administration‘s good faith. It might be added that a crucial negotiating skill is the ability to grasp how the other side is thinking, because then it is easier to create openings for compromise. What the PPP/C has demonstrated is that it finds this a huge challenge, partly, perhaps, because it cannot divest itself fully of the framework of political understanding created many decades ago in different circumstances. As a consequence, it insists on seeing everything as history repeating itself, which makes it difficult for it to adjust its thinking to novel dimensions to events which in other respects may have a superficial similarity.
The second episode which can only leave citizens gasping with astonishment, was when a helicopter dropped leaflets over the mining town seeking assistance from the residents in the restoration of order. Inevitably this was interpreted as a prelude to action by the Joint Services. As Dr Roopnaraine told reporters on Friday, anyone who wanted a successful outcome to negotiations would not “be sending helicopters to drop leaflets over the town as though we are dealing with Baghdad.” He is of course correct; we are, after all, not in a war situation, and Linden and Region 10 are an integral part of the state of Guyana, so what was the OP thinking?
And all of this was going on when, as said above, there had been some cautious optimism about a settlement. The only message that is being conveyed as a consequence of what happened last week is that the government does not want a settlement – which would confirm its total divorce from reality if it were true, since it has the most to lose if this situation is not resolved. Finally, it ended the week with the postponing of the talks on Friday, which did nothing to change the public’s perception of its motives. It should be added too that the indiscriminate throwing of tear gas by the police only served to stoke anger.
And while the government has been accusing various leaders in the opposition and Region 10 of sending “mixed messages” (who has sent more mixed messages than the administration?), it has been missing another point which was alluded to in an earlier editorial, namely, that the political party leaders have limited purchase on the situation, and even the Regional Chairman has to listen to those on the blockades. The latter may have unrealistic expectations where one or two of their demands are concerned, and they have also been lending an ear to those with uncompromising positions. However, at this stage, the government needs to ignore what is being said on the ground, and concentrate on resuming the work for a deal with some urgency. If accord is reached, it would be for the Region 10 leadership in particular, to sell it to residents, not the government. It must be emphasized, that this situation is only going to be solved by negotiation – not by force; not by insulting the other side; and not by scattering pamphlets from the heavens. And where the other side is concerned, it will certainly not be solved by violence and arson.
The government has to recognize too that once you leave a situation unresolved for any length of time, it festers and changes character, and you end up with a different, more difficult problem than the one you started out with. All of this could have been avoided if before the protest started, the government had shown some flexibility and had been prepared to postpone the rates hike, let a technical committee look at the electricity issue and come up with recommendations. It appears that up until Friday that is what it had finally agreed to anyway. After the shootings, a series of mistakes was made, not the least of which was failing to make conciliatory announcements which addressed the situation in a timely fashion. Timing is everything in politics, and whatever else can be claimed for the PPP’s political skills, timing isn’t one of them.
It has to be repeated that violent protest in any form can find absolutely no justification, and one suspects that most residents in Linden would agree. Dealing with arson is a police matter, and one hopes that the perpetrators are brought before the courts. For the rest, the Region 10 leadership needs to impress on protestors the need to avoid violence in all its forms, while for its part, the government should stop sounding like the headmaster at the local primary school, and confound its critics by seating itself at the negotiating table without delay seized with a mission to come to an agreement. As said earlier, that is the only way there is any hope of raising the blockade.
