Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Helen Clark named 2015, the year of tough choices for world leaders. In her speech last week Thursday at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ms Clark said the year presents the opportunity for a shift onto “a path of inclusive, sustainable, and resilient development.”
This is in view of the fact that there are four major summits scheduled for this year where consensus by world leaders could signal quantum leaps forward in eradicating poverty, disaster risk reduction, sustainable development and tackling climate change. Ms Clark called on the world’s citizens who have been debating action in these crucial areas to remain engaged and to hold their leaders accountable, since it is citizens who give leaders the mandate to act on their behalf.
It is worth noting here that while 2015 began with crisis situations all over the world, there have been sparks of light that give hope. The most significant to date for this region, of course, would be the movement in the thawing of US relations with Cuba, following President Barack Obama’s announcement to this end last year.
As clichéd as it sounds, there truly is a time and a season for everything and as Kenny Rogers sang in ‘The Gambler’, it’s about knowing when to hold, when to fold, when to walk away and when to run. It’s about recognizing that hegemony is not the name of the game. It’s about putting aside personal aggrandizement and making decisions that would redound to the greater good of not just your country and its people, but the world at large. And that’s where the definitive line is drawn between just leaders and world leaders.
2015 will also be a year of tough choices in Guyana; it’s an election year. But it will not just be tough for the political leadership, but for the people as well. And just as it does at the world level, it offers prospects for real change; unparalleled opportunities, one might add.
This includes a shift away from the things that divide us; the ‘us’ versus ‘them’. It is beyond ludicrous that there is racial division among brown people, depending on the nature of one’s hair. And it’s time to tell the politicians who are still bent on using this as a strategy to stop. The political campaigning has begun, not in earnest, but it’s moving and the ordinary man and woman in the street can determine how well it goes by rejecting the race card. A simple matter of walking away from any public meeting the minute it is raised would send a profound message.
While our leaders should be made to answer for their administration of the state, campaigns should be about issues. Were manifesto promises fulfilled? If not, why not? And why should we believe they would be fulfilled this time around? These are the questions that our leaders should be seeking to answer. The Burnham/Jagan tirades are tiresome and offer us nothing, but a history lesson that is often twisted depending on who is doing the telling. Both of these men are long dead and what they did or did not do can no longer affect us going forward. It is much too easy for leaders to dig up the past, and voodoo-like, dress it in airy-fairy language and put it to live among us. That is as lazy as it is wrong, as it only offers opportunities for division.
Instead, tell us what you can do for us; no, show us. This is the age of technology, let us see workable plans that involve all of Guyana’s peoples.
A lesson that ordinary citizens are yet to learn is how much power an election vests in them. By the simple casting of a ballot, citizens have a say in who leads and who doesn’t and by extension, how the country is going to be run. It calls for tough choices to be made and the most paramount would be to show up on elections day, whenever that is, and ensure that our choices count.
