The nation breathed a collective sigh of relief when the general election in August 2006 was held in calm and peace. It was a proud achievement. I was in Canada at the time and remember getting phone calls from friends of more than one persuasion whose common theme, after the initially expressed elation or disappointment, was that they felt good to be Guyanese. What had been feared as an inevitable ordeal of competing accusations and disruptive recriminations had been instead a celebration of democratic maturity.
The aftermath continued to lift the heart - acceptance of the results by the losers, assurances of fair and inclusive governance by the winners. The mood of political détente has continued. It gives more hope for the future of the country than I can remember in a very long time. For the time being compulsive backbiting has ceased to feature. A spirit of constructive give and take lingers in the post-election air like a blessing. The realization seems to have dawned, but will it sink in deeply, that in the absence of public peace it is very hard to cultivate private virtues.
A large part of what is needed is to embed in the body politic this newfound habit of civility. And in the context of this need let us consider the life and example of one of the most sensible, open-minded and civilized men who ever lived. Anton Chekhov, born in 1860, became a doctor and practised his profession devotedly. But he also turned himself into one of Russia's greatest writers. In a wonderfully creative life of only 44 years he was able to divide his time between "medicine…my lawful wife and literature…my mistress." He wrote perfect stories of shining lucidity and his plays - the celebrated Uncle Vanya, The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard amongst others - revolutionized the theatre of his day and have provided succeeding generations with vivid insights into how men and women suffer and exult, love and hate, when living even the most ordinary and uneventful lives: "People," Chekhov pointed out, "eat their dinner, just eat their dinner, and in the meantime their happiness is taking shape or their lives are being destroyed."
As a doctor, Chekhov tended thousands of peasants in a clinic on his estate, planned and helped build schools, endowed libraries, and scraped together money and support for a multitude of other causes. This first-hand involvement with day-to-day practicalities made him scornful of all-or-nothing recipes for universal salvation. He was once accused of writing a story that lacked "ideology." "But doesn't the story," Chekhov responded, "protest against lying from start to finish? Isn't that an ideology?"
In a famous letter to the editor of a journal which had begun to publish his work he outlined his credo: "I am neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk, nor indifferentist. I would like to be a free artist and nothing else… Pharisaism, dulwittedness, and tyranny reign not only in merchants' homes and police stations. I see them in science, in literature, and among the younger generation. That is why I cultivate no particular predilection for policemen, butchers, scientists, writers or the younger generation. I look upon tags and labels as prejudices. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love and…freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take."
What shines through in Chekhov's life is his plain humanity, the allowance he made for peoples' weaknesses and foibles, the understanding he showed for beliefs he did not share, the respect he cultivated for the personalities of others, his disposition to seek arrangements which brought out the best in all whom he encountered.
Would that the spirit of Anton Chekhov might preside amidst the tense debates which will undoubtedly resume in Guyana. The civility which he stood for all his life is going to have to prevail in such debates. And in this connection my thesaurus gives a wide range of words and phrases associated with civility: common courtesy, considerate attention, graciousness, politeness, tactfulness, diplomacy, amiability, obligingness, benevolence, agreeableness, kind words, generosity of spirit, respect, attentiveness, good temper, amity, peacefulness, fair-mindedness - to name some of them. A tall order, to say the least, in the context of the old Guyana.
Détente is truce not permanent peace. On all sides the effort to entrench the gains surrounding the remarkable election success must not slacken. The losers cannot expect miracles of sudden and comprehensive national accommodation nor, however, will they want to wait interminably for more than lip service.
On the other hand, I have no doubt that the main burden of seeking to entrench the elements of a lasting accommodation will fall on the winners of the election, the party in government now for nearly a generation. It is they who must take the main initiatives, show the greater magnanimity, rise above rebuffs and never seek refuge in a majoritarian redoubt.
And it is, of course, the leader of the winning side who bears the chief responsibility, by far, to ensure that the process of accommodation does not slacken. It will not be easy. It will be very hard. The personal qualities required are not at all ordinary: the ability to forget past opposition and even insults, the capacity to soothe injured feelings and disappointed hopes which, if left untended, might harden into permanent hostility, the willingness to assume responsibility for the failures and bad-mindedness of subordinates and correct them, the rare ability to share credit comfortably, the largeness of spirit it takes to admit mistakes readily and learn from those mistakes, the determination to find the time to keep trying again and again. All that is hard but it is not impossible if the President wishes to leave a great legacy.