Who will be The Man? This has been the question of interest making the rounds. The more meaningful question is: what kind of man is needed by this country? And it does not have to be limited to a man. Yes, what must be the dominant behaviour of the person who is prepared to make a new start in an unflinching effort to bring about change?
Essentially, it is very simple and straightforward: there must be a readiness by such a person to admit to the deficiencies of what went before, and an insistence on being honest with comrades and citizens. Here is the hard road that must be travelled.
The past up to yesterday has failed us. This is the crux of the history lesson. No matter how examined – now versus then; revisionism; relatively; in partisanship; through pretended harmony – the past has failed the peoples of this nation. And this stands as an irreversible verdict lodged against the pantheon of apotheosized. For no matter how mythologized, they must be inseparably linked to the past. And the past is about failure at a national level. This is a crucial first step that whoever the man is must recognize and declare publicly. It will enable the nationalist, the patriot to find the desire and the drive to start in a new direction. To be willing to travel to the ends of the earth in search of peace and the progress that comes with it, as best exemplified by Anwar Sadat of Egypt.
To go to the ends of the earth – or 83,000 square miles – is an unprecedented challenge for even the intrepid and unconventional. It would be unimaginable for the traditional or the tremulous. It would take special courage to move away from the individual legacies of party and opposition legends; to look beyond their high watermarks; to denounce their failures. Again, there is that one all-encompassing and damning word: failure; for fail they did – all of them at the most arduous challenge of them all, that is, the challenge of healing. The head pounding, stomach churning, gut-wrenching issue of healing has never been addressed on a comprehensive basis or in a completely honest manner. It has laid the best leaders low, and tarnished their contributions; no matter the libraries of rhetoric; legions of advocates and defenders; old timers and newcomers; and every angle and propagation. For amidst the cacophony of adversarial tumult, there is a single broad bar of sound that rises above all others. It is the sound of a patent dishonesty, or, more mildly, a reluctance to confront and overcome entrenched realities. Whether this originates as a top-down mandate, or as a bottom-up support machinery designed to justify, it succeeds only in realizing a perpetuation of the past through its maintenance in the present, with the promise of amplification in the future.
And so this stricken society yearns for someone who can rise up and walk towards a different calling, and while doing so carry this land forward with him. Not for some of the people, not for a privileged elite, but carry the great unspoken and ignored with their silent calls for succour. This someone will denounce the Stalins – whether brown or black; will disown the Begins; but will walk in the footsteps of Sadat and King and Gandhi. The next leader must be ready to walk that walk and all the agonies and torments that accompany it; to take a stand from the beginning, and to be ready to pay the ultimate price like all three of these Muslim, Christian, and Hindu men did.
These are the demands made of he who responds to the ‘what’ of circumstances, as facilitated through change. He must be willing to turn against the sacred memories; to resist the hardliners; to persuade the faithful. But this will only be realized if he is principled enough to believe and to commit, and to risk it all for a dream and a vision of a new tomorrow that starts today.
There is still more. In addition to separating from the failures of the past, and the demand for transparent honesty, there remain other tests. First is the willingness to sacrifice – to translate and implement past the talk and postures in the teeth of opposition from within, and to inspire rising expectations from without. Because every overture, every programme will mean that favourite sons will be enraged; too much too quickly and they will revolt. Of necessity, such sacrifices will have to be made, or else there will be disappointment towards perceptions of the symbolisms of too little and the meaningless. Such are the sacrifices embedded in parcelling a limited pie; tempering old grudges and new fears; and navigating a tightrope where objection and failure are wound in every strand.
Second, Guyana waits and watches for a man who is strong enough to make the sacrifice – indeed, the gargantuan leap – of severing connections to what has been propped up; of toppling present day untouchables; of jettisoning the flotsam that debilitates society.
Anything else, and the current speculation is about a horserace of diminishing curiosity, with a much sought after prize for personal elevation only. Nationally, it would be but another footnote in the enduring chronology of a people’s misery.
Who is the man that is willing to commit to addressing that which needs to be done with all of the intricacies and heartaches? Who is the man who will accept that Dante speaks for Guyana and all Guyanese: “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” Yes, it has been a journey too long, a place too dark, and a way always curved. Surely, there lives a Guyanese man or woman who pulsates with these obvious truths; who is inflamed with the ideals, the visions and patriotism to want to search for a pathway towards finding ourselves, and to be willing to fight for it; even to die for it.
