Dear Editor,
From all appearances, Guyana has to have the highest per capita rate of deafness and obtuseness in the world. Inarguably, that same rate has to be in the upper brackets; perhaps even close to a hundred per cent level.
For fifty long dismal years, this nation, through its leadership cliques, has beaten the same hollow drums, and blown the same melancholy bugles. These might stir some nostalgic chords, but they have all invariably petered out into the fade of a desultory trickle, and the emptiness of what could have been, should be, but just never is.
Listen to the drums and bugles, both old and new: constitutional reform; national unity; truth and reconciliation; security, empowerment, and equity. The drummers and buglers arrive with five, and leave involuntarily after twenty-five; there is neither bequest nor legacy from the political master class that can carry forward in the vital areas that matter. This is the history. There is only the grief and regret of a people repeatedly used, repeatedly jilted, and repeatedly insulted and scorned. This is today.
Today the cycle of what is the equivalent of inane cocktail hour chatter repeats itself. It is that season. Constitutional reform, once again, makes a hypertensive, cardiac congested, brain-seized amputee hobble across the nation’s stage. Just look: it is a crawling, dragging, listless hobble tracing and retracing the same circle yet again. It is a timeworn circumference populated by political travellers and political detractors who delight in taking turns in pointing out the obvious: nothing doing! No interest, hence there is no movement.
I already hear why ask for this to be committed to in less than twenty-three months, when it was repeatedly rejected for all of twenty-three years.
For constitutional reform and national unity and truth and reconciliation all begin and end at the same anathematic places: political ugliness, ethnic nakedness, social abhorrence, and national retardation.
Editor, the leadership excesses and much more have to be corralled and tied; except that no political figure has dared to go near them. Hence the lack of will and movement allow the menacing and the lethal to roam free. Now I seek to take this into other territory.
If by some miracle, there is meaningful constitutional reform, then what does that mean on the ground, and as a practical matter? What would be the realities of its translations and interpretations? Can those whose entire public lives have been dedicated to trickery, manipulation, and all manner of endless artifices be made over and be born again politically? I say not. In Guyana, it must be recalled and emphasized that politics is a legal racket (an oxymoron?).
Further, can those who harbour multiple animosities deep within (a sweeping majority) be persuaded that there is a better way, and that this is it? That such is conducive to the broader self-interest and the overall greater self-worth? Again, I say not so, and this time I cringe.
When the pro forma blasts about constitutional reform have quieted, which one among any of the crop, both past and present, stands ready to interpret narrowly and implement steadfastly for the nation’s benefit? Not the party, not the personal, but the national. Instead, I envision more of the evasions and the innovations that have characterized the self-service and self-perpetuation that has been the tradition and norm. The self-confidence to engage in self-assessment, and to commit to self-sacrifice are simply too much to ask. And that is where things stand and will remain for a while to come.
As always, this pathetic song and dance about reform and the rest will pass. It is time for some soothing carols and the freshness of clean cool rains.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
