Dear Editor,
I read with approval the caption `President says committed to setting up CoI into Mahdia tragedy’. It is a good first step, a sound presidential one. Now, I have a condition or two that I believe could lead to the best CoI possible, and what would do justice to the fallen children of Mahdia.
It is the President’s prerogative to name any CoI for any purpose of suitable urgency and gravity, without consulting anyone, listening to any suggestions from anyone, incorporating any recommendations from anyone into the Terms of Reference of his proposed CoI. Still, with that said, it would be the worst development, the newest unkindest cut and singeing of all to the departed and surviving of Mahdia, if this CoI in the making were to be a creature of solely and exclusively the Government of Guyana, as determined by His Excellency, President Irfaan Ali.
Frankly, it would be a waste of time and effort, something the conclusions of which run the risk of being dismissible before it has held one hearing, before a single word has been recorded. There are too many stakeholders around, too many victims and too many interested parties. I respectfully exhort the President to purge any thought, any advice, to go it alone. Please, sir, let us not add another tragedy to an already harrowing tragedy of national proportions. Only a nationally constituted CoI (and all should know what I mean) would suffice to deliver the degree of probity, the level of integrity, that the poignant circumstances of Mahdia call for, if not nonnegotiably demand.
I refrain from identifying any nongovernmental people, or those others that should be chosen by the government, to sit in an ultrasensitive, well-constructed CoI.
Similarly, I resist the temptation to alert the President regarding what should be and not be in the ToR. President Ali must show what he is made of in this dire hour. It must not be of the usual strains of the usual politics. This is not a CoI for some obscene elections, and vulgar, boorish partisanship. It is about the loss of life in the most unpardonable of circumstances, impacting in the worst ways the weakest in our society. The President must neither falter nor fail at this crucial hour, and the key is how he proceeds with this CoI. And he must not flinch, no matter which of his comrades could end up being nailed to the stake for what happened; he knows that there are those also. If this appalling tragedy cannot stir the instincts towards genuine governance, then nothing ever will. Nothing! At any time. For any momentous, disastrous event. We have been visited by the grim reaper, who collected a harvest of our young, weak, and vulnerable. We have had infamy and ignominy, Dr. President; let us now have neither indecency nor insipidity with this CoI.
Separately, it is a source of astonishment, indeed delightful, to have noted that the three days of national mourning were graced with not an instance of loud music, or the now constant of daily parties. There were none in my vicinity, none encountered in my limited travels. On Independence Day, there was a sombre silence, until late in the evening. It is the way it should be. Notwithstanding occasional follies, there are many Guyanese who still have some modicum of civility left in them. I wish that they would present me with those gifts about which I would love to standup and heartily applaud.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
