During my silent moments as I contemplate the way Guyana is being governed, I am taken back to what I read some years ago written by HG Wells. He said: “The true strength of rulers and empires lies not in armies or emotions, but in the belief of men that they are inflexibly open and truthful and legal… as soon as a government departs from that standard it ceases to be anything more than ‘the gang in possession’ and its days are numbered.”
The more I think of the Government of Guyana’s most destructive failure to the nation, it is the absence of a reconstruction plan from January 1993. Their failure to have one from then to now has resulted in them now being no more than the ‘gang in possession.’ I shall move away from the error of their visionless ways to a more poignant example of their failure to have a handle on what was the most demanding of their reconstruction tasks in view of the mess they inherited – corruption.
The most recent missive to date on their failure, albeit satirical, is the one by GHK Lall. (I came to learn he’s a Berbician, a fact I was doing my best to establish until it was disclosed by one of his kin.) Although I roundly condemned his proselytizing, Mr Lall makes me proud to be a Berbician, and I will add my humble yet honest opinion to his continuing condemnation of what is wrong with the ‘gang in possession.’ This leaves him vulnerable to ridicule by the more erudite, for the simple reason that he omitted to qualify his satire with suggestions as to how not to be merely a ‘gang in possession,’ but a government of vision for the people, since they are of the people and made so by the people.
Having been given the reins to rule, they seem somehow to have lost their sense of direction and exhibit endless flaws, so that they now no longer command the respect of many who once held the party of the parents of the nation in such high esteem that they gave their lives to propagate the ideologies which benefited the working class of Guyana and beyond. The following is a list of some of the more immediate issues that should have been addressed since January ’93:
1) crime and its offspring, corruption, starting with the police force and customs;
2) education – in this case I shall begin in reverse, from UG to nursery;
3) water – clean, sterilized, potable water in every tap in the entire country;
4) lights;
5) roads;
6) health;
7) extricating ourselves from the Caricom failure;
8) integrating with the landscape to which we belong, and having a first-hand knowledge of our borders and how to manage these with the use of the armed forces;
9) rewriting the constitution to reflect the will of the people; and last but certainly not least in terms of what is lacking in any government re-calibration where the aim is to make new, namely to show the world once again that we are leaders and not condemned to follow others;
10) Care beyond compare for the elderly and the infants.
All of the above with careful planning could have well been on the way to becoming a reality. But of course from the beginning it required vision of which any the PPP led government headed by President Bharrat Jagdeo is bereft. By all accounts he is yet to leave a lasting legacy. The only thing worthy of mention is his declaration whereby he saved the taxpayers the burden of having to repay a loan for what would surely have been a non-starter, that is the proposed wind farm at Hope Beach. The location was not conducive to production for reasons yours truly had the honour of making known to him through others.
In conclusion, we as patriots of the land which made us who we are should not condemn without first having a reason for doing so, and making known a solution for that which we condemn.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Tannassee
