Forward into backwardness
by Festus L. Brotherson, Jr.
DOES political intimidation belong in a democracy? Yes, as long as it takes place in a civilised manner in which norms of decorum are followed and government, opposition, and people follow the rule of law. This is not what is happening in Guyana. Events since December 1997 have been eroding the foundations of our less than seven-year-old democracy. It has remained afloat in rough waters perhaps only by a miracle. Usually, experience and precedent with mistakes are wise teachers. To paraphrase the great poet, Carl Sandburg, it is quite alright for any one or people to make mistakes because there is no shame there. The shame, he said, comes when those same mistakes are made time after time with increasingly negative consequences. Some political and other leaders in Guyana are causing our people shame while the leaders seem immunised from feeling disgraced. Much teaching and learning is necessary given current conditions of gridlock, where everyone appears comfortable taking the dogmatic position of "my way or the highway." This type of cocooned myopia spreads the infectious disease of intolerance that continues to ravage the already developmentally ill body politic. It is an outlook which takes Guyana forward into backwardness. Consider some realities and absurdities. In the real world of everyday life, lawyers who lose cases most of the time, pay the penalty of low earnings. Doctors who repeatedly do serious harm rather than help or heal their patients, suffer a similar fate. When the work of engineers creates mostly danger, they are fired or prosecuted. But in the political world of Guyana, politicians are not held accountable for ruining lives in an entire nation of already suffering people. In fact, they reap rewards of corruption and continue placing new wine in old wineskins with predictably damning results - even more suffering for the multiplying poor and powerless. Let us take a closer look at the current situation with the public sector strike under way. There is no doubt that public service workers are underpaid and deserve a pay hike if only to keep up a decent standard of living and avoid slippage into irreversible poverty. This is a legitimate major concern of striking workers across class lines. However, the leadership of the unions involved has not been operating in a context of democratic norms in pursuing workers' grievances. The insulting rhetoric to President Janet Jagan has rivalled, upon occasion, that of twice consecutively defeated Desmond Hoyte of the People's National Congress (PNC). Mr. Hoyte has set for children and young adults the unstatesmanly example of defying the authority of popular will and legitimate government in attempts to "bully" his way back into office. And because tactics of the union leadership resemble some of Hoyte's penchant for threats and other protest tactics in government agencies and in the streets, the unions find themselves, perhaps wrongly, associated with the Hoyte-led PNC. How can any merited industrial strike degenerate into vulgar male and female "wining up" in front of school children? And what can justify the terrorism of young minds by mischievous tactics of bomb threats to schools which disrupt teaching and learning? Yet, all of the principals in union, government and opposition circles preach about "the importance of education" for "our future leaders"! Mr. Hoyte's behaviour, against the wishes of better qualified leaders in the PNC, rallies people on questionable grounds. In such a climate, production of goods and services breaks down and private foreign investment steers clear of Guyana. Lack of revenue makes wage increases more difficult to grant than usual and our children are being denied education and a worthy future. Feeling absolutely no shame, the PNC leader knows that his tactics to make the country "ungovernable" because "force is what those people understand", have greatly contributed to the government's ability to respond more amply to union calls for a 40 per cent wage increase. Against this backdrop, the PNC leader poses with school children for photographs during Common Entrance exams, in attempts to soften his dictatorial image at home and abroad. Contrast that with a recent moving photograph of a young student attempting to study outside the gates of a locked school compound, and we get a better sense of the image problem the striking unions have. And was it not Dr. Joey Jagan who addressed union rank and file and called upon them to cease disrespectful attacks on his mother, President Janet Jagan? One hopes they are ashamed. These are a few of the realities and absurdities adrift in Guyana, bereft of civil discourse as more and more resounding blows are struck against the infirm foundations of the democratic political system for which much blood and other major sacrifices were made by the Guyanese people. Here is another absurdity. Why on earth do not the more level-headed moderate leaders in the PNC call upon their leader, in the lyrics of telling black urban music, "to get steppin?" Why is he not "kicked to the curb?" The answer might lie in a fable told me by one of Guyana's most respected former diplomats many years ago, Sir John Carter. As Sir John told it, a rabbit that could not swim and an alligator that was blind were trapped on a river bank and were both facing certain death from a raging fire caused by arson. They made a pact. The alligator would swim and the rabbit, by staying on the reptile's back, would navigate. But the rabbit was sceptical. He wondered if the alligator would not break the promise and devour him in midstream. The alligator protested heatedly saying if were to eat the rabbit they would both perish. Midway across the river, the alligator begins to eat the rabbit. Dying, the rabbit asked why was the reptile eating him. The alligator responded, "Habit! Just plain habit!" A fair question is this: is the habit of authoritarianism so entrenched in the PNC over nearly 30 years that the habit of following dictatorial rulership is unbreakable - even knowing full well the vanquishing that lies ahead for the leader and party? And what about the PPP/Civic government? It might be time for a major reshuffling and/or exiling to distant margins of senior government executives who have not learnt from the 1961-1964 experiences that led to the PPP's ouster from government for 28 years. Charges of racism - Guyana's curse and communal pathology - must be addressed and, if found true, curbed after appropriate punishments are meted out. More than that, the government must make the issue of racial charges and accompanying tensions one of SUSTAINED priority towards significant amelioration of distrust and slowly effervescing hostilities in the all-important capital city of Georgetown. Not to do so is not to govern well. Here is the tragi-comedy now turning full tragedy. Given the behaviour of the Hoyte-directed PNC, and out of fear, no sane East Indian citizen will vote for that party whenever the next general elections are held. And if the PPP/Civic continues to treat perceptions of racial discrimination as not meriting sustained highest priority in search of redress and solutions, no black Guyanese citizen will vote for the ruling party come election time. The result will be even deeper, more extensive polarisation of the ethnic divide that is our nightmare. Is not poet Sandburg insightful about repeated mistakes? And do we want a Guyana constantly moving forward into backwardness? (Dr. Brotherson is on e-mail at lysias2@yahoo.com) 
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