Dear Editor,
In the turbulence of argumentation about the schisms within the society – ethnic, racial, social, economic, religious, single, dual and multiple citizenships, riggers, infrastructuralists, protestors, and counter protestors, leaders and pretenders – there remains a few who are bemused about their true identity. For they are not believers, not compulsive followers, as they continue to learn, to research, to be advised, to invoke, where and when possible, an authentic meaning to their existence.
The incision is not a wound, only a scar, not enough to earn sympathy from a prospective neighbour.
The confused reflections of the mind cannot be disclosed to a counsellor, hardly a pastor, who is more inclined to shepherd a flock than to research the depth of a soul. So these few resort to their individual intellectual fortitude, or fortresses, to withstand the random misinterpretations of identity. They cling to professionalism at work, teamanship in sport, integrity in social relationships, coincidentally setting examples here and there, of a reasoning human being.
In a recent particular instance he/she lives in a socially bifurcated community, whose residents until just now, not only recognised, but applauded the specific contribution being made to the development of their children, that is until the poison of elections apparently separated them into opposing camps of voters, making no allowance for the possibility of clean blood streaming through even one or two of the other’s veins.
The result was a wanton attack on a property symbolising a roused hostility, not so much to the individual professional performer, but the lingering, fundamental conviction of an irretrievable societal differentiation.
It all makes elections a destructive instrument and GECOM a sorely conflicted agent.
This is not in fact an instant case. On the contrary, it is a deeply troubling, almost irredeemable infliction on the individual and collective psyche of our ‘one nation’.
Voter or not we are undeserving of such degradation.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
