Dear Editor,
It appears that the president has lost his appetite, or at least some of it. It shows when the fare of social cohesion features as the main course on the menu.
Nowadays his words are wan, and he does look a tad pale when the unpalatable menu is closely scrutinized. Some rich foods (jobs, brand loyalty, and company kept) have to be sacrificed, so that cohesion can gain the nutrition of infusion, and some much needed colour and vitality. It looks as though His Excellency has shed some precious weight, as the heavy stress of competing choices and cacophonous comrades wear down motivation and determination. Guyanese political realities can make the genuine regret career choice and wish for the comforts of barracks, or the serenity of silver years far away from all that has bedeviled.
Well, the social cohesion bell cannot-must not,-be un-rung. It could be muffled though, as is becoming increasingly obvious. The warm embracing ambience of pre-election “One Love” has collided with the post-counting poignancy of muted war in the east and unofficial war in the west, among other points. Then there are the vibrations (not from rastaman) that undermine that which is positive.
Increasingly, there is this sterility of thought and action that imbues the once spiraling visions of social cohesion. As experienced by the leader, the internal political trenches indicate the same impenetrable darkness of hoary ways. If this continues (and I don’t envision otherwise), then the restoratives of balance of perception, balance of interests, balance of power, and balance of confidence are all consigned to the fateful ashes of missed moments and lost opportunities again. Again!
Social cohesion, once glowingly telegenic, assumes the anemia of the generic now demeaned into the static of mere rhetoric. As if to concede and confirm the president’s own indirection in this direction, his chief cook, the Hon Minister of Social Cohesion, has been nowhere near the kitchen and stove of this once sizzling brew. There are no platters (not even platitudes) forthcoming. Nothing is bubbling. And nobody is talking up a storm. That is, with the exception of foreigners.
There was the outgoing senior U.S. diplomat weighing in with some pointed exhortations to slow children in need of lecturing and cajolery. Unlike Mr. Hunt, I can be more direct: this country needs a cohesion revolution; no more flavours of the day. It is time for cherished politically sponsored, racially charged traditions and institutions long held sacred to go. And go now! Like the antebellum and post-Reconstruction American South, segregation and unequal treatment must be confronted in Guyana. Yes, I know it took a hundred plus years to get anywhere meaningful. But a solid sustainable start has to be made here, where the virulence of division might be less visible, but is just as umbilical, and thoroughly suffocating.
De facto division of spoils, division of civility, division of vision, division of opportunity, and division of direction and priories and destinies have crippled and cast low.
Like it or deny it, in this 21st century, this country has to be coaxed and somehow moved from its mental, spiritual, and emotional segregationist history and ways. It is the way of the sprawling ignorance of a backward and primitive people and society.
I intend to discredit and disparage unsparingly this ramshackle culture, along with its public practitioners and its stealth admirers. This way and culture must be targeted, denuded, and stripped of standing and dignity. And those who engage in carefully nuanced exercises unpersuasive in either substance or result must be called out and shamed. The leader has to take the lead and now.
The president himself cannot speak lesser and at longer intervals on this social cohesion/national unity issue. Such would signal wavering, and be non-presidential. He must be intellectually and politically bold enough to invest spiritually and to the hilt. He must take the lead in prioritizing and repeating for emphasis at every opportunity to send a message to internal opposition and the rest at large.
As examples: talk about oil and incorporate that there is every intention to share with all; discuss flooding and the moment has to be commandeered to state that remedial activities will be evenhanded and timely and wherever; converse with youths and children and he must challenge them to be unifying messengers and cohesion agents. This is not for the fainthearted or the vacillating. The psychic soil of this society, like Carthage, has been deliberately sown with salt to overwhelm and destroy life-giving forces. Hence, this country struggles for air and energy, to deliver on promise, to reach near any potential. The president knows this as well as the rest of us.
Therefore, social cohesion and national unity must not be figures of speech, or terms of art. They must represent the gauntlet bared and hurled, even though the probability of Pyrrhic results lurks heavily. The president must step forward against the tide (and resistance), and I respectfully urge him to not shrink, but to do so ceaselessly. This is too crucial to be left to the occasional, or the inconsequential trickle of all that is tepid. The president must reach for every opportunity, to be the chorister-in-chief, as he works these planks and visions into his addresses: There is a different way; it is an infinitely better one.
Further, this must permeate his discourses and his listeners. The more I examine this whole cohesion and unity matter, I discern and appreciate that, for it to be successful, there must be a pivotal core of believers within the leader’s inner circle, if only to overcome the barnacled ethnic curmudgeons. Tragically, the circle and curmudgeons might be the same folks, as elsewhere. Regardless, if there is failure to gain creeping traction, the vine withers palpably and ignominiously. Thus, social cohesion can become the latest tragedy in a long line of political apostasy and national failure.
A historic moment has arrived for leader(s) and people to face this issue full length and eyeball to eyeball. It must be recognized and grasped, perhaps desperately. It is a challenge enlightened by a vision and powered by struggle that encompasses the hills, the plains, and the seas. There is a better way. And therein lies some semblance of salvation for this nation.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
