Dear Editor,
When I was a student living away from Guyana, I often spent money meant for groceries on books. In one of those books, nearly 20 years ago, I saw a passage that never left me.
That passage was from a speech made by a judge to persons who were about to become new citizens of a country. He said, “I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes.”
He continued, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law and no court can save it. No constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”
If we were to replace the word ‘liberty’ with ‘democracy’, would those six sentences not tell us everything we need to know today?
No court, no law and no constitution can make us apply the principles of democracy if we don’t want to. There will always be something to excuse us: the court must give us the answer; the elections commission is not ready; elections will disrupt common entrance.
I’ve had the bad luck to have been involved in two serious car accidents and I know from experience that there is a point when the accident has already happened and can’t be reversed but the consequences haven’t happened yet.
So, for instance, after a collision, a car might turn on its side and skate along the road. It may veer a little to the right and hit the median. If this happens, the driver will be crushed, and his passengers injured or killed. It might go straight and come to a stop without hitting anything and the driver and his passengers will live. Nobody knows which will happen (and I didn’t) while the car is careening along on its side.
We are almost at that point in this country, but the accident has not yet happened. Each of us who wants to know the truth already knows that elections must be called. The collision will happen if no extension is agreed by two-thirds of the National Assembly or elections are not held by 21 March.
If we cut through the noise all around us, we will easily see that there is a single driver in this country who controls what will happen next as we race towards the accident waiting two corners away.
If democracy lies in the heart of the President, he will call elections to be held within the time limit or quickly seek to get it extended by a reasonable time. If he chooses to take the country to that collision, I hope for all our sakes, as passengers, that it goes straight and doesn’t hit anything.
Yours faithfully,
Kamal Ramkarran
