Hope for our future as one nation, with one destiny, stirred our hearts this week when House Speaker Raphael Trotman and former Speaker Ralph Ramkarran echoed each other in scolding their quarrelling colleagues, while calling for good conscience to govern public behaviour.
These gentlemen both walked away from their political parties because they embrace a vision for the Guyanese nation that eradicates dividing lines.
In presiding over the National Assembly, sitting in that high, honourable chair overlooking the opposing sides of Parliament, and looking on with non-partisan interest at our national leaders bicker and brawl in verbal pettiness, both men must have gained a unique perspective of our society.
Both saw the nation from a new vantage point. Both must have sat in the Speaker’s chair and wondered what everyone on the floor was hollering and shouting and heckling and insulting each other about, as Parliament paraded its rudeness in management of the people’s affairs.
Sitting in the Speaker’s chair gave both Trotman and Ramkarran that sense of possibility that our nation stands as one people, for they did not see the dividing corridor. Rather, they saw the big picture, including the gallery ahead of them, where citizens gather to witness, in silence, their Parliamentarians in action.
While the Government and the Opposition look at each other across the dividing corridor of the House, and face off with antagonism and accusations and scapegoating, the Speaker looks at the scene from his chair on the platform, situated at the head of the House.
Thus Trotman and Ramkarran may have developed a deep sense of frustration at the political divide in this country. In surveying the scene before them in Parliament, they must have developed a presupposition and worldview of our body politic that encompasses everyone making up a single body: the National Assembly, the House, the Guyanese Parliament.
Parliament to them is one house, not two divided sections. Whereas Government and the Opposition see and think of Parliament in terms of that dividing corridor, and the opposing, hostile eyes across the way, the Speaker sees all spread out before him, Government and Opposition on his right and left, and citizens directly in front. It is quite a unique perspective.
And we saw the result of that this week.
Trotman addressed Parliament, and demonstrated strength and leadership in a speech of laudable national import. The Speaker warned Parliamentarians that the nation dislikes their quarrelsomeness, their distrust of each other, their hateful language.
And just days later, the former Speaker, Ramkarran, wrote on his online blog a criticism of President Donald Ramotar for his juvenile, cussing tirade against Moses Nagamootoo. Nagamootoo has earned the right to be of statesman status in this nation. Yet, President Ramotar subjected him to the nastiest of name-calling in a bewildering display of Presidential pettiness.
Ramkarran echoed a lot of the sentiments of Trotman, and in these two gentlemen we see hope spring up for our nation. All is not yet lost.
These two are starting to play a crucial leadership role in this nation. They are starting to define the conversation, to impose boundaries on the uncouth leaders who drag us down to be a poor civilization.
Trotman and Ramkarran, interestingly, both now speak from outside party walls. They both walked away from partisan politics. Trotman, after being elected Speaker, stepped away from the party he co-formed, the Alliance For Change, to be able to play his role without bias. Ramkarran comments on public affairs as a private citizen, having resigned from the ruling party.
These are amazing signs of hope for us as a nation.
Here we have two leaders emerging on their own strengths, playing that independent role of peacemaker, seeking reconciliation, unity and good sense, all on their own. They carry no party baggage. They hold no allegiance to any party boss. They speak entirely out of their conscience, freely. Their sense of who we could be as a Guyanese nation, their understanding of what refines us as a people into a decent, civilized society, shapes their public stance.
We saw Moses Nagamootoo, Richard Van West Charles, Khemraj Ramjattan, and many others abandon the traditional political parties to preach that soaring message, of reconciliation, unity and mutual trust.
Against the shocking divisive rhetoric of both Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar as heads-of-state, the reconciliation message got drowned out. The tumult and noise of quarrelsome men verbally abusing their fellow comrades plunged us right back into that murky swamp of insane distrust of each other.
And the society suffers deep pain and hurt from such uncaring men, from such careless public displays.
So to see Trotman and Ramkarran step out to nullify such stunted backwardness is a great sign of hope.
President Ramotar would lament that to criticize his hateful public tirade is to be anti-government. Such is the depth of the leadership pit into which we have fallen.
Citizens see little sign of good governance in this country, especially with an Opposition and Government constantly snarling at each other in hostile spits of rage.
Now Carl Greenidge and Finance Minister Ashni Singh have embarked on a verbal war, as Budget Day approaches. In fact, the pugnacious Greenidge seems to be picking fights even with his own party.
This sort of public behaviour must give way to an embracing of each other, a magnanimous reaching out in trust and mutual respect, in an authentic, genuine caring for the rise of the Guyanese nation in the 21st century world.
In leaders like Trotman and Ramkarran, thankfully, we see bright signs of hope.
In a society where private sector leaders and other relevant forces fail to offer hope that the fractures afflicting our body politic would heal, the outstanding leadership of Trotman and Ramkarran, our Speakers, lightens the heart.
In them, we see sure signs of hope for us as a nation. In them, we see leaders of good conscience rise up among us, and so we know that one day the Guyanese people will stand tall on the world stage.
