Dear Editor,
Every country needs its civil society. It is that collective that reflects the values and soul of the nation. After the July 3, 2002 event when protesters stormed the office of the President in New Garden Street, there began a civil society movement. Not in all of Guyana’s turbulent past: the Cent Bread Riots, the 80 Day Strike; ethnic violence of the 1960s and after; or the onslaught of bandits, did anyone try to do what was done to the Office of the President. Civil society was shocked. The sleeping giant, with its callous back turned to the bleeding society of bitter tears, suddenly stirred itself. Its fragmented parts started to come together in a network that was supposed to promote a better society. I understand that the awakening was the result of the prodding received at a Carter Center seminar. Shockingly, the awakening lasted for about a year, and then, like all such local movements, died the death, as I had predicted to one of its leaders.
Recently, I have been reading about another initiative ‒ the Guyana National Council of Public Policy (GNCPP) – a civil society movement. The organisation’s facebook page outlines its 5-point mission, one of which reads, “Reaffirming the key role of civil society and people-to-people cooperation in the peaceful development of Guyana and in the overcoming of dividing lines across Guyana.” Laudable though the mission is especially at this time, there is no mass support for the organization.
I am of the view that, like me, many citizens have no faith in Guyana’s civil society. They have no faith in a group that rises like a balahoo on the ocean and then subsides before obliteration. They want no part of a movement that is formed when our society seems threatened but subsides when counterfeit serenity washes in. They do not want to come out in support of something that has fervor without enduring power. People want a robust civil society that would be there in season and out of season, like an Egyptian pyramid, weathering the storms and standing resolute. Like Franz Fanon, they want to see the body warming gently until it is consumed, thereby creating a lasting alteration of its composition.
Yours faithfully,
Lennox Cornette
