Dear Editor,
The proposed Linden electricity increase has given me cause to look back and reflect on so many things, more so that some seemed to think that wrongs of yesterday give them the prerogative and latitude for whatever wrongs are being done today. And in doing so shades of George Orwell’s account of “Animal Farm” came back to me vividly and more magnified, brazen and, disgusting under our nose, making the clumsy imitations of Orwell’s characters a mere amusement, a joke compared to their behaviour. Mrs. Nadira Brancier, daughter of Cheddi Jagan saw some of it and condemned it – look left, look right what you see is exactly what you get. Some are so full of themselves that they flaunt their arrogance like a badge of honour; when you see them you know who they are, but that’s exactly what they crave! Ours appears to be a society of masters and servants; this is in effect what goes on, the arrogance of authority rules supreme. I read somewhere where it is said “he that is greatest among you shall be your servant”, not so here, our leaders are the haughty ones, they strut their strut proud and large.
When I was told that Dr David Hinds in his lecture to mark the 32nd anniversary of Walter Rodney’s assassination mentioned that we lack real quality leadership generally to match the vibrancy and calibre like those of yesteryear; that with the transition of the Jagans, Burnham and Rodney, there is now a kind of leadership void and no one in attendance challenged him or questioned him, then it was reasonable to conclude that his assessment was correct.
Our politics of today appears to be of the worst kind; sinister and deceitful. We lack genuine thoroughbreds, what we have instead is lightweight hustlers, who see more the glory of themselves with almost every move made in pursuit of self attainment.
We are indeed much poorer for not having politicians possessing the dynamism/calibre of the Burnham/ Jagan era and more so Walter Rodney. Those who have assumed position as the new guards are distant aback and the spark in the old stalwarts of the hectic and energetic past flickers once in a blue moon – which is understood; though I think because of age the term battle weary seems a more apt description.
But the task of leadership is always a tall order and never for the faint-hearted; taking on the status quo is stepping into the deep with a thorough understanding of what lies ahead, she/he must be prepared to buck the system and go against the grain. No leader today can claim to be fighting for the underprivileged/poor based on the fallacious assumption that the law is for all (people), that it is evenhandedly applied, such a leader would be irrelevant and out of place. I dare state once again like a recurring decimal: “the poor cannot live by all the laws made for them, for they will die”.
The worst impression that the working-class can have of a leader is that she/he is “playing”, a sense of insincerity and hypocrisy. There are too many dreadful happenings within the order of things that call for a radical approach to bring about positive, effective change for underprivileged, more so our young people. Now, no one, no leader can be faulted for advising young people to strive for excellence – a good sound education is very fundamental for one’s own sake, but personal ambition does not make a convoluted system automatically get any better just so, there has to be an assault at the root of the system, its very foundation.
It is no secret that personal aggrandizement invariably has a commanding influence within the scheme of things, thus finding one’s self on high, dry ground to take advantage of the very lop-sided system, the choice to “mek yuh heights” wins over the attempt to “rock the boat”, not to mention that there will always be room for the overzealous ambitious ones within the status quo.
I’ve heard individuals – some aspiring politicians/leaders boast about and use themselves as examples of how to beat the system; a way out of the gutter, an impoverished life, by dint of hard work – “education”, but as conditions creating the ills, the hardship, the decadence get worse, it hardly ever matters to them anymore, they even glow in it and begin to see a kind of heaven in that very sordid system that the struggling everyday people, from which they came,
could ever dream about or imagine. And this is all a cop-out, all a hustle, when in fact they were never in their wildest dream prepared to take the bull by the horn.
And this is the stuff so called leaders are made of- great pretenders, play play leaders.
This is why even today many of these types spare no chance at every opening they get to preach and spread their insipid, disingenuous and specious theories to mask their shame and guilt about “Rodney not being smart”, “was no politician”, “a brilliant historian but a political dunce”, and a whole bundle of intellectual trash and hog-wash to make him look irrelevant and cheap, giving the impression that they are much smarter, much wiser and know the “game” better, when in fact they are mere cowards and materialistic grabbers.
It is so sad that after Jagan, Burnham and Rodney, people are still so easily duped by jokers and feckless leaders, that this pattern of behaviour works so well with these frauds that it is frightening looking into the future; that today in the face of racial distrust and disunity, blind corruption, appalling crime, moral degradation, rising poverty and dwindling hope among both young and old across race, we remain devoid of a unifying thing or leadership which we can rally around, as Shaun Michael Samaroo correctly stated “we fail to cultivate in the heart of every citizen a national spirit, a sense of belonging”.
And it is for all of the above that made Rodney stand out as such a remarkable personality, that he has to be referred to so often. No wonder the working-class, the poor had so much abiding faith in him. Matters not what some may say, they were all dumbstruck by the magical force he exerted, and in the cloister of their minds were constrained to pay him obeisance -and it wasn’t for nothing, in fact it was precisely for what they saw in him.
That is why his death deflated and disappointed them (the masses/poor) so much, a true leader, a light of hope was gone.
Verily I say to you dear readers, that’s the fullness of why till today we are still lost in a masquerade.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
