The future of the University of Guyana now hangs in a precarious balance. Not too many of us are really surprised, though. It’s one situation for which we can blame the politicians with a clear conscience. No cliché there. The years of low-life party political squabbling have now taken their toll. The neglect of UG, the political control, the starving of the institution of physical and intellectual requirements and the rank incompetence that has reflected itself in the management of UG have finally coalesced and hangs like a Sword of Damocles Over the institution. UG is Humpty Dumpty waiting on its “great fall.”
There are customary “noises of war” in the camps of those whom, if the truth be told, have not one iota of a solution to the crisis but who will never pass up an opportunity to have their voices heard. That is their way of rendering themselves relevant. When you come to think about it they are really no better than the politicians.
It’s the students that ketchin hell. Poor things! Fed up but, hitherto, focused! Now it seems that the politicians have gifted them a motive for militancy………. courtesy of the unfathomable crassness that attended the sacking of Freddie Kissoon and the laughable excuses tendered by the political hacks/Council Members who wouldn’t know shame if it were to be dropped on their heads. There is simply no end to politicians’ proclivity for shooting themselves in the mouth and now that the seeds of unmitigated chaos have been sewn by the mindlessness and the mischief we must wait and see whether this might not be the end of the road for UG.
Already, the dissonant noises of protest threaten to drown out the views of those who want no more to try to put UG back together again.
It’s a veritable fish market. The TUC has now thrown in this huge red herring about wanting the Vice Chancellor to intervene. Pray, tell us, TUC….intervene and do what? Try, somehow, to derail the political train that is careering through Turkeyen? Wave a magic wand and have the political bedbugs crawl back into their crevices? This is not the VC’s fight! UG is caught up in a political Tsunami and Professor Carrington is powerless. In fact we are told that he has already been so informed. Should he join a picket line? Fat chance! The greater likelihood is that he will join the immigration line at CJIA for outgoing passengers.
Why don’t we ask President Ramotar to “intervene?” Isn’t he the President of the Republic? Isn’t UG a matter of national emergency? Doesn’t the coincidence between the newness of President Ramotar’s tenure and the chaos that prevails at UG afford him the opportunity to make a statement, to take a stand, to turn a political corner? Shouldn’t we be asking the President to bite the political bullet, to scatter the political hacks on the UG Council to the winds, to pump real money (from VAT or LCDS or wherever else) into the physical and intellectual rehabilitation of our university? Shouldn’t we be trying to push Mr. Ramotar to do away with the pressures to hold the same absurd and counterproductive line that his predecessor did and use the UG situation to send a message to this entire nation that he is in charge and that he is his own man? Come on TUC let’s have you put a real solution on the table.
Listen up Pressie! Shrewd politics is about seizing the moment; it’s about timely intervention. Jump in! Give some semblance of meaning to those elections promises about being President of all of Guyana. It will take some intestinal fortitude but take the plunge, anyway. Shrug off the decadent political culture that sees everything in terms of winning and losing. But so what? This may well be your opportunity to find a place in the political sun. And look how early in your tenure it has come!
Quite what lies ahead for the hapless students of UG is anybody’s guess. Some will probably just wait it out; drown themselves in their unending frustration over the fact that while the politicians make endless speeches about the importance of youth to the future of our country, those words are no more than hot air. It is they, the politicians who have infected the UG with their political viruses that are slowly killing off the future of our young people. Others will probably simply give up on the idea of ever getting a Degree from UG. Maybe they might try for UWI or perhaps for a visa…….to go anywhere.
We must hope, though, that they resist the idea of becoming professional student protestors, people who put aside their hopes and their dreams and their aspirations to follow the lead of those who seek causes over which to protest, to march, to demonstrate, without ever themselves ever having constructive solutions.
As for the political opposition – already slow off the mark and still trailing the rest of the field….let’s have you jumping in there too, jumping in with remedial proposals uncluttered by party political interests. Let’s have you grounding with the students and by grounding we do not mean closed door briefing meetings. What we mean are open fora where you listen more than you talk and after which you do your talking in the right places…………in the National Assembly where you can make the Government listen and in serious engagements with the President where, as well, the balance of power allows you to be tough and tenacious. Because you should bear in mind that if UG dies we will not afford you the privilege of simply standing to one side now and making speeches condemning the government when it is too late. All are involved. All are consumed!
