Dear Editor,
There is hard, surging discontent across Guyana; it is not limited to opposition supporters, or a single ethnicity. The government takes umbrage at the mere mention of this palpable truth, for it soils the roseate blandishments advanced.
There is division, too, in this land; and this public secret is just as unwelcome in the telling. It is hurriedly dismissed. That is, unless it serves psychic and electoral aims, or suffices as ugly street and television realities for widening the wedge of the already deep divide.
No quantity of pathetic patches and shortsighted superficial approaches will ease the discontent that rages, or mend the divisions that glare in the face. If, as before, opportunities are not carved out for comprehensive treatment of the ethnic malaria, then it will return again and again to disturb and devastate. The present and future will prove to be more like the unstable, uneasy past. Guaranteed.
It is more than who is right or wrong, who has (or lacks) moral presence. Rather, it is about how the mind and feet of this nation are chained and hobbled; of where it cannot go; and of all the pathways that it closes on itself.
Since it has not happened before who will be ready to attach authenticity to handshakes and postures that seek to answer the simple ethnic and power equations?
And they are simple, except that there are no such handshakes, or no such interest. Therefore, everything said and done engenders mutual distrust, even disrespect; whether for the initiative itself or those making any such gesture.
This is how far emotions and matters – and fundamentalist beliefs – have been encouraged to disintegrate. Now there is the constant of a forced, smouldering cohabitation.
Surely, no one is fooled. Surely, this cannot continue indefinitely – and unaddressed. And most assuredly, the seeds long underground sprout and make presence seen with growing frequency to the alarm and detriment of concerned neighbours and citizens caught in the middle. Here is the bottom line: This discontent and division will not be solved by the police, occasional community outreach, political cleverness, or political intransigence. Neither will there be any lasting dissipation by poll and parliamentary reversal.
Let this reality be said here and now: Those who yearn for a return to the ascendancy of unchecked good old days will be disappointed, not necessarily so much by result as by reaction.
The chronic discontent and division will only be resolved through the give and take of consensus; of sharing and including; and of the readiness to lead where we have never been before.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
