Silence isn’t noble, it’s just self-preservation

Dear Editor,

We are at a critical juncture in our history. Inherent in that precarity in power that the PPP now faces is the solution for true Guyanese democracy for the first time not just since Independence but in our entire history as a modern geopolitical space. The excesses of the government and the impunity with which they treat the average citizen have all but guaranteed that neither they nor any party will receive an unchallenged mandate for leadership now or in the near future.

A curious development in light of this situation, one that runs counter to apparent logic, however, is that we have not had a corresponding seizure of the opportunity to initiate change, particularly from the middle class.

What I see at play here is the age-old phenomenon where people in dictatorial, oppressive societies engage in varying levels of deliberate cognitive dissonance, mentally reshaping their reality whenever the oppressing power is actually in danger.

Many in the middle class in Guyana – the lawyers, medical professionals, the clergy, the consultants, people in the media – have long made up their minds that the PPP is unassailable and that has been their rationale for both silence and complicity. Better after all to cooperate and survive than to tackle an apparently invincible juggernaut. When the juggernaut is nonetheless about to be toppled, the error of silence and complicity becomes glaring, so for many people, already accustomed to taking the easy way, it is far simpler to seek to undermine and discredit the force capable of upsetting the system in which they have carved out a compromised comfort. Machiavelli noticed in his time that: “…there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

From those who don’t necessarily support the PPP directly but who have done well or moderately well in Guyana, we see a retreat into several fallacies to excuse their reticence, and to undermine those who are actually speaking out. The one I hear most is that I am too negative and I do not offer solutions to the issues I criticize, something that is patently false. My most stringent criticisms over the past year on a particular subject have been on the mismanagement of the Caribbean Press by Dr Frank Anthony and Dr David Dabydeen; not only have I pointed out the lack of financial accountability and inadequate systems of administration, but I offered to engage, going as far as suggesting ways the Press can improve, including the convening of editorial and management boards. President Ramotar and Drs Anthony and Dabydeen have several times committed to putting boards in place, something that has not been done to this day.

I comment on racism, I offer the solution of dialogue. I comment on suppression of the media, I offer the solution of stronger systems of democratic expression. I comment on the impunity with which the government acts, I offer the solution of a strong and unequivocal response from both politicians and civil society.   The problem is that people will see what they want to see, and blind themselves to what they don’t.

Another fallacy of reticence that I’ve encountered is that of transference of ownership of responsibility. I’ve called out artists, journalists, youth activists, religious people, and very often the response I get can be is that while the group or person has considered speaking out in general they will not do so according to ‘my’ schedule or on ‘my’ issues. I have to find myself pointing out that I don’t own any issue and very often the issues that they are silent on are issues that they have committed to in their own self-professed mandates.

The final, and flimsiest, excuse for reticence is that my often colourful language on social media turns people off from supporting ‘my’ cause. My cause is change, for a better and more equitable society of everyone, free from fear and free of discrimination – if one of my crasser rhetorical methods, the sort of engagement that even Walter Rodney did not reject, turns you off from lending your voice in support of change, then you’re not really interested in change in the first place.

There is no excuse for reticence, and it is often a self-justifying posture. If you stay silent and encourage silence among your peers for fear that you will be targeted, you create the environment that encourages that targeting. If you seek to discredit legitimate critics of a corrupt administration on the most spurious of charges, like not offering solutions, you are in fact an agent by proxy of that corrupt administration.

We have an increasingly oppressive society, as evidenced most recently by a presidential guard allegedly assaulting a teacher for voicing his opinion and with no official response from the Office of the President, the solution is to speak out against such oppression since our constitution, as flawed as it is, guarantees freedom of speech. It isn’t my problem, it is all of ours, and I am not dictating the timeliness of interventions, the urgency of the situation is.

Too many people in this society lie to themselves in order to live with themselves. Your silence isn’t respectful, it isn’t strategic, it isn’t noble ; it’s just self-preservation and the sustenance of comforts that you refuse to risk even when the possibility of true change is staring you right in the face.

 

Yours faithfully,

Ruel Johnson