The political terra firma isn’t quite so firm any longer; there has been a kind of earthquake, although there are some on both sides of our divided citadel who do not seem to have absorbed this new reality. Although the contours of the land have now changed, they think they can proceed as they have always done and pretend that everything is as it was. The first thing one wishes our politicians for the New Year, therefore, is a little dose of realism, so they see things as they are, and not as they were or would like them to be.
For those who want to go back to the past and the confrontational mode in which they are most comfortable, the temptation will be to go for another election. Both sides, by different mechanisms, are in a position to do this. In the first place, that is not an option which is as inviting as it looks at first glance, and not just because it might take Gecom another couple of years to get ready for it. What is most important is that it would be to defy the will of the electorate, which is in no mood in any case for any early election; that simply represents too much stress. Whoever takes that route, therefore, may well be punished by the voters for doing so, particularly if the breakdown between government and opposition has come about over an issue in which the citizenry has some special interest. This is a democracy with its own peculiarities, and the conventional wisdom from other countries does not necessarily hold good here. The second New Year wish for our politicians, therefore, is that they exercise restraint and refrain from using the ultimate deterrent.
There is no map of this new landscape, and given ingrained attitudes and lack of experience in negotiating the kinds of gullies and chasms which abound, one anticipates possible stalemates on a variety of issues. Nevertheless, one hopes that the politicians will not give up too easily; they owe their constituents some sustained effort on the issues which matter. Therefore, the third wish would be that they display some persistence tempered by patience.
Having said that, however, clearly a prolonged stalemate is not what good governance is about, and it will be necessary for those who represent us in the National Assembly to learn the kind of negotiating skills which most of them have never been called upon to acquire in the course of their political careers. The prognostications that they will be fast learners are perhaps not good, more especially since APNU and the AFC which together form the majority have already reached an apparent impasse over the post of Speaker of the House. To the untutored outsider, one might have thought that they should be looking at candidates from outside Parliament altogether, where they might be able to reach a compromise. Whatever the case, in the process of the many negotiations which are likely to be ahead, the fourth wish is that our politicians could be endowed with a little imagination.
Contingent on that, of course, one would also hope that our politicians avoid the rigidities of their received ideologies or traditional assumptions, and open their minds. Many of them have been imprisoned in a stockade of dogma for so long, that they have been shut off from the possibility of release which new thinking would bring. The fifth wish would be that they genuinely listen to and entertain the possibility of the validity of other points of view and in so doing learn some flexibility.
There may be many issues crowding the agendas of the different parties, not all of which require immediate attention. Clearly there will have to be some sensible prioritising done, along with longer term planning about a viable parliamentary timetable. None of this will be easy, so the sixth item would be to wish our politicians a capacity for organization – especially in terms of their thinking.
The seventh New Year wish for our politicians would be for them to display a certain clarity of mind. Not all of them have been noted in the past for their ability to home in on the gravamen of an argument, or distinguish framework issues from content, but the less muddle there is in the thinking of those who represent us in parliament, the better. Along with that an emphasis on the precise expression of their ideas would not come amiss. Clarity will avoid a lot of unnecessary misunderstandings and miscommunications which militate against compromise.
One would hope too that the politicians never forget again that those they serve in the first instance are not their parties, but the citizens of Guyana. Their primary purpose is not, as some of them seem to think, to ensure their party’s accession to or perpetuation in office – let alone their own; it is to play a part in the government of this country, and they are obliged to discharge that function to the best of their ability. The eighth wish, then, is for less obsession with power and more obsession with service and performing a job efficiently. As such, it goes without saying, therefore, that honesty and integrity should be at a premium, and that taxpayers’ monies should be regarded as sacrosanct.
And where the supporters of the various parties are concerned, the politicians should not treat them cynically; they are entitled to a bit of frankness from their leaders and party representatives. They are not there to be used for party ends. The same goes for the relationship between politicians in general and the citizenry, so the ninth New Year wish would be for a bit of candour all around, and where government business is concerned, far greater openness.
While there are many other useful attributes one could wish for our politicians, perhaps the tenth one should be more rationality and less emotionalism. In our kind of situation, where there are strong group identities, it is easy to fall prey to the lure of emotional postures. The thing is, these are sometimes not even in the true interest of the particular group on whose behalf they are expressed. No, in 2012 we will need a great deal of sweet reason (if not reasonableness).
