Dear Editor,
Three and a half years into the coalition government and the questions, conflicts, and struggles continue. Performance, corruption, and the raging debates about the degree and significance of change proliferate across the political and social spectrum. Another look is taken at government with two questions in mind: has this government delivered or hasn’t it? And if it has, how acceptable is such?
In some areas, government’s performance has been mediocre, at best. Economic affairs lurch forward with the frail tentative steps of a drunk. Though the rhetorical surges of its blood pressure are high, the body temperature is cool. Too cool and too placid; it is apathy-inducing. Agriculture lacks the daring spirited incursions into the untried; untested the vast potential of this sector stays. Gold leaks from the sides. While everyone speaks with angelic innocence and pretended ignorance, the metallic riches elude a nation that can use the benefits, returns accrue elsewhere and to others. This is part of what amounts to studied undeclared critical protest; the private sector sticking it to the government: who is boss now? When pillars such as these are weak, the economic house breathes heavily, drags on its own weight. As to that budget, the best that can be said about it: uninspiring, bland to the point of boredom.
Foreign Affairs have settled into a low decibel rhythm. The Americans are here and well-positioned; they declare themselves content. The Chinese are coming: more of them, and with many more projects and deals, and dollars too. These are not of the zero percent variety either in rate or weight or the state of future obligations. Theirs are the scrappy financing terms of pawnbrokers: hard-edged, hard-knuckled, hard-hearted. Today is the sweetness of courtship and gifts; tomorrow comes the jarring realities of domestic payback. Public Security has this Dante’s Hell called crime. Guns, mules, men, and money all over. All over, too, are these legacies of a torrid time, the violent detritus of what politics made possible and was celebrated before. Yesterday’s celebrations live on in the many grievances of a poor man’s wake for this government. It has grappled and struggled with a monster of an octopus reaching everywhere (and everyone), including its own.
Government Affairs are severely handicapped by another dirty legacy that gnaws and gores and guts: Fifth columnists. They are all over and under: concealing, undermining, leaking, betraying. A national network of schemers and sellers thrive; their very presence represents in sum the posthumous exercise of political power, an increasingly palpable expression of post-election reach and effect. It hamstrings and bleeds tactically and critically: whether document or development or discussion, the dams of vital confidentiality are breached, administrative energy and ability drained, if not subverted. The David Granger administration has been benevolent in multiple instances and several areas. Treachery and the disputatious has been its rewards. And so, a government grasps at discovering that finely tuned field of functionality, where it can plan and deliver authoritatively and consistently. It is still finding its way.
In race affairs, the national head
harbours special visions; alas, the extended political, social, and environmental body parts are suffused with barely contained poisons that speak of historic excesses hard to purge. Breath and sweat, words and deeds blend seamlessly in a nonchalantly recklessly prejudiced society: this is what it is! This is how it stays! Hard and immovable; nurtured and embraced to the detriment of all. Silky speeches and luminous postures aside, this is the Guyanese Way. Government likes. Opposition likes. The people like.
In media affairs, government loses the daily propaganda battles, and the generalized unrelenting propaganda war. Not even a contender. It does not seem unduly perturbed. Volume, cosmetics, and reality are mainly carved out, influenced, and controlled by non-state actors and powers. Its few hard won successes are given short shrift, overwhelmed by force of circumstances, defeated by avalanches of the negative. Changes, incremental and occasional, are lost in the shuffle, and suffer from an absence of light and unpardonable official neglect. While the handful of positives disappear before the actions of the many hands that dip into the treasury to lift what does not belong. This, too, is an inheritance from the good times era, when the only colour was money; and so too was the politics. Thus, a country is rendered prostrate; indeed, lifeless.
When all things are considered, it becomes obvious that this government has done poorly, fairly, and sometimes, commendably. There is too little of the last, and too much of the former. The record of three and a half years is neither flattering nor encouraging. There are bright spots, though, if there is time and interest to look close enough. The failure to capitalize and emphasize of what has been different and better only adds to the list of what could be, what should be.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
