Dear Editor,
The year 2022 has opened with forebodings, of which the health of large proportions of populations around the world are threatened, while the prospect of a long life may well be curtailed. It is against such a background and that of other predictabilities, that Guyanese are being reduced to being supplicants for promises to be fulfilled of: transparency, accountability, and ‘inclusivity’, even ‘unity’ – albeit formulated by one overriding group who contradicts itself by claiming to manage a ‘demockracy’. Citizens, parents, their children are being exposed to a pattern of behaviours that make them wonder why they are being treated as the ‘Opposition’. There is also the frightening implication of inevitability of a so-called leadership being in situ for the rest of theirs and our lives – the climactic height of ‘unity’.
In the milieu there are those who ask themselves whether the current pontificators would commend the ‘Opposition’ for behaving the same way? The answer is self-evident. In the process however, there is detected, the perpetration of the ‘theory of relativity’. For quite apart from ‘grants’ to ‘contractors’, rumours proliferate about how ‘friends and relatives’ are accommodated, even in respect of publicly articulated issues. It is as if we are not all ‘human beings’ – like teachers for example. Why are they not included in the practice of ‘relativity’? Why are they not regarded as equals who set the foundation for the growth of every one of us – in the public and ‘non-public’ sectors? The latter descriptor obviously includes the formal private grouping that benefits from the practised version of ‘relativity’, remindful of a time in our history when ‘self-help’ held a more positive connotation.
Young adults being educated – in classrooms and virtually – exposed, as they are, to a wide range of truths and untruths; information and disinformation; must pause and reflect on wherein their fathers’/mothers’ enunciations would slip and fall. In this context they must ask one another who to believe, what examples to follow, which exemplars to emulate; what is the likelihood of their aspiring to positions of professional decision-making without having to commit to ‘parties’, without ‘unifying’ non-transparencies’, ‘non-accountabilities’? How can we aspire to, and achieve our independence of thought, morality, and consistency? How can we best manage to raise ourselves (and all others) – before, now, and later – to be respected ‘human beings’.
Even at this juncture, it is in the context of professed ‘unity’ that we must inquire about the exorcising of Region 4 – partitioning one purported ethnic voting capacity; while consolidating one counter-whole Region 6. ‘Unity’ divided? Just ask the resident foreign witnesses to give their vote. The disillusionment is palpable.
Sincerely,
Elijah Bijay