Dear Editor,
Dialogue is a feature in healthy democracies. When it works well, dialogue generates knowledge, consensus and cohesion. Dialogue helps us to know better so that we can do better.
Effective dialogue is thus a vaccine against ignorance, arrogance, exclusion and other socio-political ills.
As we seek to set Guyana irreversibly on the path to peace and development, we must encourage the building of mature relationships that generate the ideas and consensus the nation needs.
Specifically, we need to find ways of bringing our diverse perspectives into a common space that allows us to explore and reconcile our differences by agreeing on the way forward. Our diversity need not lead to perpetual division.
The ‘letters to the editor’ feature that began in Guyana several decades ago has encouraged dialogue even as it promoted diversity. Over the years, letters by writers such as Frank Fyffe, Janette Bulkan, Clairmont Lye, and Freddie Kissoon have provided information, stimulated debate and challenged autocracy.
Another useful function played by letters is to hold public servants accountable. For citizens captive to a broken local government system, this has been an invaluable service.
At the same time, some writings reflect the society we wish to leave behind.
There is little redeeming value in letters that merely repeat a party line, or engage in cuss-downs, for example. What about those letters that harp on problems to the exclusion of solutions?
It is also apparent, dear Editor, that the generosity of newspapers such as yours is being exploited by a handful of writers who routinely use your platform to massage egos, purge bile, and manifest arrogance. This is particularly true of online comments, where partisan politics gets added to the mix more overtly.
Such writings discourage dialogue. They suck goodwill and optimism from the spaces we desperately need to learn from each other through respectful and constructive engagement. More to the point, these letters are usually monologues.
To deepen our democracy, we must deepen policies and practices that shorten the distances between us, particularly at the socio-political levels.
Stabroek News and other print media can play a key role in ensuring that ‘letters to the editor’ add to dialogue rather than subtract by publishing criteria that guide letter writers, and encourage constructive engagements.
In modelling new and improved forms of dialogue, the media can encourage us to abandon a style of engagement that tends to shoot first and ask questions later.
The ERC, the Ministry of Social Cohesion and civil society are also important players in the search for new forms of dialogue.
As we approach our 50th anniversary, and reflect on where we have come as a nation, it is worth recalling the famous African saying: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others.”
Let’s keep dialogue going, Guyana. We need each other for the journey.
Yours faithfully,
Lawrence Lachmansingh
