Dear Editor,
A new Guyana beckons and on May 11 ordinary Guyanese will formalize their preference for a break with the vulgar. Brigadier (retd) David Granger will be at the helm and as far as is humanly possible, he is the best candidate in the political arena for the job. The Co-operative Republic of Guyana will once again be blessed with mature leadership and slipshoddiness in public life will be challenged, the virtues of education will once again be restored and respect for the ordinary man and woman will be reestablished. My confidence in Mr Granger’s ability to deliver on these points lies in his own self secureness and his concern for the well-being of Guyana and Guyanese as individuals and as a collective political entity. I base my confidence on his deep concern that I should not use the content of an essay he wrote ‘Social Matrix’ negatively, and indicated that he wished that it be used positively.
The nation will have once again a leader with real academic credentials of the highest order and a patriot who would be an immense source of institutional memory. He is the ultimate manager, and while it is obvious that the years of military life and his own self-image have severely restricted the flexibility of his hips, we still see a man possessing the willingness and the awareness to challenge his own limitations to be effective at duty.
Finally, his attention to family life, and his belief in the balance between physical and spiritual well-being makes him the almost ideal role model for the nation’s youth.
For his part, Mr Nagamootoo seems to demonstrate a dour resoluteness and maturity so lacking in the nation’s leadership in the recent past. The image they present is a formidable one, high not only in PR value but in capacity and as a symbol of hope. I look forward to the challenge to mediocrity in the new regime. The coalition’s survival will be an important factor in building social cohesiveness as its survival at the elite level will inspire the ordinary people to believe that they can build their own coalitions at the grass roots level.
The correlation between innovation, innovative and capable leadership, teamwork, planning, physical and mental preparation, and performance at the highest levels has been demonstrated by South Africa, Australia and New Zealand in the 2015 Cricket World Cup. The same is true of Guyana as the new dawn beckons. Guyana has the opportunity to produce its unique brand of democracy and allocative mechanisms in its fight against poverty and ethnic insecurity. Developmentally, Guyanese are more than mere entrepreneurs, since all have demonstrated their prowess in that area. Being able to compete with international capital for the vast resources will be a step forward as the market becomes an arena of self-realization and not merely profit. A comprehensive programme of social justice will go a long way in ameliorating the legacies of a rotten national foundation which was based on ethnic domination, economic exploitation and social triumphalism. These factors have created a unique and almost exclusive historical reality which cannot be addressed by worn out and irrelevant political/economic clichés. A greater emphasis on research will have to be developed as we redefine democracy and the market in the light of the principles of social justice, our history and where we desire to go.
A robust executive and government in partnership with a population that is more involved and self-empowered to determine its own well-being are the surest guarantees to the realization of the nation’s developmental potential. Barring provisions which place the President beyond the law for acts committed or omitted as President and those which make it almost impossible to impeach the President, the powers of the President should remain intact. Programmes and policies should however be enacted (a) to make local government more autonomous; (b) to amplify the power of the media to receive, gather and disseminate information especially on government actions; (c) to empower citizens’ organizations to initiate change; and (d) to insulate tenure in the public service and the judiciary from the executive and make it more efficient.
These are not unreasonable demands for us to make of ourselves; they will help us to create our own greener pastures. This is our reasonable duty.
Yours faithfully,
Jonathan Adams
