In a column in this space in mid-January 2012, in the aftermath of the general election, I wrote the following: “The playing out of this scenario, in very public view, of a President sitting in a Parliament, where his party is outnumbered by the coalesced opposition, is going to mean that the normal ruling party dictates will not be operating in Guyana, and this manoeuvering for consensus, by its very nature, is going to require exemplary people, people of character, for the governing apparatus to work. Ultimately, leaders will emerge from this process, and within the elapsed time of this government, we will have learned a great deal about these Guyanese we have selected to represent us. “We will find out who among this group are statesmen, or stateswomen, and who are not. We are going to see in whom resolve, and restraint, and tolerance reside, and in whom such qualities are absent. We are going to see where there is mental and moral strength, and where egos or selfish aims rule.
“Such are the circumstances in which the recent voting has left us, and while it is certainly going to be intensive and taxing in the Parliament, it will also be absorbing to watch from the outside. At the end of it, whenever that is, we will know considerably more about who our political people really are – what is their character, in effect – than we now know. Additionally, and not incidentally, we will also have learned much about ourselves.”
Today, only 16 months later, we are seeing revelations and surprises coming virtually daily from a wide variety of subjects and individuals, and we have indeed learned a great about our leaders. We have a much better idea now as to who among them appreciates the leverage of compromise and who among them continually resorts to bluster, and, ironically, such understanding has not come from leaked documents or clandestine recordings; it has come from the mouths of those persons themselves in words of their choosing. We now have a much better idea of who is inflexible and who is arrogant. Revelations have also come to us in the form of various behaviours or decisions that reflect on the integrity, or lack of it, among our representatives.
As taxing and troubling as these times are, however, there are some aspects of great value to us. In the overall, it can be argued that in a time in Guyana that we disparage as “the majority of one,” we are actually seeing, on the political front, more of the core democratic concept of inclusion that is a consequence of no dominant establishment group steamrolling its projects and proposals forward. There was a time here when the government of the day had the clear majority to simply wait out the opposition rantings and then blithely do as it wished, but in this incarnation, we have seen several successes by the opposition, albeit narrowly, that are the result of this almost even political division. Even the fiercest advocates on both sides must concede that a measure of balance has come into the equation with the shift from ‘winner-take-all’ majorities.
On a narrower point, in these past two years of Guyanese politics, we have seen the notion of character come to the fore with a force and span as never before seen in our history. We have seen it emerge, like a flower gradually opening, in certain individuals, and we have seen it, conversely, withering away in some. In the array of misdealing and machinations, on all sides, which have confronted us lately, what you hear citizens now yearning for, in the persons who represent us, can be summarised in the notion of ‘character’; they may not use that precise word, but that’s what they mean; that ingredient has come to the fore.
In the course of the close political battle being fought, another benefit has been the range of information that has come out, or been forced out, on matters that would have stayed secret if the government of the day had been predominant in the executive and administrative branches and in parliamentary votes. In recent weeks, the furor has been raging with particular intensity around the proposed Amaila Falls hydroelectric project and the rising Marriott Hotel, with dissension and personal clashes taking place between and even within political units. One can bemoan this condition, and wish it away, as some writing to the media have done, and to a degree that is an understandable human reaction – we are embarrassed and even distressed by the wrangling and the confrontations and the vitriol.
Perhaps the more reasoned view, however, should be to see this maelstrom, visited upon us, as a turmoil that will ultimately be beneficial. If we are ever going to get on an even keel in Guyana and employ all our various abilities and resources in a forward push, instead of resorting to denigration and/or gridlock, we will have to endure this battle of wills and ideas and personalities because from those clashes our consensus on leaders and policies will emerge. From that process, carried on mostly in public view, the closed minds and the vindictive will reveal themselves as several have already done. The unproductive and the unethical will lose favour. It may seem we are stuck with them forever, but history shows, everywhere one looks, that such detritus falls away. Be anxious, yes, but also listen and watch and learn from the exchanges as both the ones of substance as well as the insincere show themselves as they truly are.
Evolutions or revolutions do not come easily. They are wrenching processes; that’s how they produce change. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” So as much as we may regret the turmoil, we should accept it as the engine of change turning. To wish it away is, in effect, to be satisfied to leave the problems in place. Who would be in favour of that?
