Dear Editor,
The word accountability is used indiscriminately so often that it has become a meaningless buzz word, especially for those in leadership positions. Plainly stated, the definition of accountable includes being obliged to account for one’s acts, and accepting responsibility for one’s actions or inaction. Accountability is often mentioned when describing the performance of elected or appointed public officials, especially in the case of Ms Sooba, a former president and former Attorney General Anil Nandlall et al. However, the community’s failure to recognize and acknowledge its own need to be accountable tends to absolve all factions of that responsibility.
This blanket lack of accountability feeds the very conditions that continue to block our forward progress. The most damaging by-product of a lack of accountability is that it helps to perpetuate a status quo which, by any measure, is not in people’s best interest. Outrage typically only lasts a moment, and is not the start of sustainable protest. Accountability begins by meeting one’s individual responsibility to adhere to an agreed on issue or performance, as well as adhere to moral and ethical values. A simplistic example: Something seemingly as unimportant as failing to return phone calls suggests a lack of accountability. Of course, any number of things might prevent a person from calling back, but a pattern of not doing so is not only disrespectful, but a failure to be accountable. At times, this can have serious consequences.
Another example: An individual accepts a group’s purpose and objectives but regularly fails to attend scheduled meetings or respond to meeting notices. This may or may not indicate a lack of interest or concern, but such behaviour does indicate that attending the group’s meetings and/or responding to the group’s request to do so, is neither an immediate priority nor consistent with her or his professed ‘buy-in’ to the group’s mission. While these examples may on the surface appear trivial at best, I would strongly argue that they are snapshots of what occurs all the time in Guyana and in the diaspora, sometimes with serious negative consequences. I am certain that for those who have worked extensively with groups to develop common ground on important issues like police abuse, education and politics, these examples will readily resonate, and they would have little or no trouble supplying their own accounts about the implications and contradictions of individuals’ stated priorities versus their actual behaviour.
The problems and adverse conditions affecting our people should be dealt with honestly. Reality includes both the positive and the negative, and soft-peddling negatives distorts the truth. This is especially true in the political arena when often times, seemingly trivial matters derail a group’s strategy or efforts to achieve a particular goal or objective. Further, failure to deal honestly with both pluses and minuses makes it virtually impossible to effectively hold the system accountable. It also obscures people’s responsibility to hold themselves and their leadership accountable.
Accountability is a top-down, bottom-up proposition. It starts with parents exercising greater responsibility, caring, and control of their children while holding leadership at every level, accountable. This requires a rigorous re-examination of our mindsets and rejecting the prevailing individualistic and materialist values. Ultimately, this means we must again practise moral and ethical values. Most likely, this will occur when we as a nation (individually and collectively) become sufficiently dissatisfied to behave differently and cease mouthing empty platitudes that perpetuate a status quo that is contrary to our best interests. This requires reclaiming and internalizing the communal values that defined our great and proud history as a nation. Lasting solutions to post-colonial challenges require an alteration of our mindsets and rededicating ourselves to collective work and action; anything less will not get the job done.
Yours faithfully,
Yvonne Sam
