Dear Editor,
Last Saturday night (July 19), I visited the Congress Place to be part of the birthday celebrations for the President, David Granger. I was there from early in the evening; the President was not there when I arrived but I was told he was on his way. I was mingling, enjoying the sights and sounds, when my wife called me to pick her up from another location. I did not want to leave because I wanted to hear the President’s birthday speech.
I quickly hurried to drop my wife to her appointment and got back to Congress Place just as the President was beginning to speak. He was not speaking from any prepared notes. I pay closer attention to people when they are speaking from off the ‘top of their heads’. When persons speak without prepared notes they usually say some things that they might not have said if they had written down their thoughts.
As I listened to President Granger, he said three things that fascinated me. Two of the things he said always fascinate me when he says them. He said that he would like the givers of gifts to him, to hold the frankincense and the myrrh (a reference to the gifts given by the wise men to Joseph and Mary at the birth of Jesus), and give him boats instead. This is so that the children in the riverine areas could get to school in a more consistent and timely fashion. I am fascinated with this approach by the President, because it speaks to his mindset. For one to defer the acceptance of personal gifts in preference for the gifts being given to others, speaks to a mind that has self-actualized and is magnanimous in scope. Such qualities are rare, especially among politicians.
Then that night he also said that he released those young boys from prison because “young boys should be in school and not in prison.” He again reaffirmed his commitment to making this an annual event. This decision of the President also appeals to me because this too speaks to a kind of mental rationalization that is enviable.
One is led to ask, Why would the President of the country, with so many pressing priorities, be concerned about the plight of the least respected in the society? Why would a newly elected leader take the political risk of releasing offenders back into the society, without them serving their ascribed sentences? Again, this kind of thinking appeals to me. As you would know as a criminologist and prison chaplain, I have a passion for working with ex-offenders and recovering addicts. So I fully understand the President’s rationale.
Maybe I would have been equally public with my contingencies and structure for such a massive prisoner release programme. But I would like to think that the President has surrounded himself with folks who would provide suitable recommendations to him, so as to reduce the likelihood of any adverse backlash.
But the thing the President said that night, which I heard while standing alone at one end of the room, and which left me in deep psychoanalytical contemplation was that, “Leadership is a lonely road.”
When he said that, my Freudian mind lit up in very incredible ways. It was as if he had stopped speaking; he had not, but my mind had raced away from consciously grappling with anything he said after that. Sigmund Freud had used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind (preconscious, conscious and subconscious or unconscious). That night, the President – unscripted ‒ dipped below the surface of the water (to the larger part of the iceberg, the subconscious or unconscious) and made an admission that was earth-shattering to me.
Why would a three-month-old Presi-dent say that, “Leadership is a lonely road?” What has happened or is happening in his world that caused such a revealing admission to surface so publicly? Who, or what, was he thinking about when he made that revelation? And a thousand more questions swirled in my mind.
The reason that I was so taken aback with that statement from President Granger, was because in a very informal and relaxed conversation with the former Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds, he had said the same thing to me. My secretary and I had visited his office on my request and as we spoke he said in passing, that leadership is a lonely road. And ever since Mr Samuel Hinds said that to me, my Freudian mind caused me to view him in a whole different light. I could not help but wonder if he was just going along with the political flow of things.
Mr Sam Hinds was urging the then Minister of Human Services, Jennifer Webster, to have me be the administrator of the Onverwagt (Hugo Chavez) Project. I had spoken to him of the possibility of taking the guys off the streets and developing a sustainable, hydroponics agriculture project on the sprawling land space on the compound there in Berbice. I explained to him that if you need the occupants to remain at the facility, you had to create employment and activities for them to do. If you create jobs for them then you create a win-win situation: you keep them off the streets and they make some money.
The $250 million facility, that he (as PM) had opened a year before, was at the time unoccupied and ornamental. Mr Hinds understood what I was saying and the proposal I was making to put the facility to use and so he asked Mrs Webster to give me a chance. Of course she never did. One year later when she left office, the Onverwagt Project had 17 occupants (the facility could house 180 occupants) and the streets of Georgetown were still filled with the homeless.
Mr Hinds told me that Hugo Chavez wanted the facility built in Georgetown because that is where he saw the homeless people, which caused him to make the donation. However, the land space was not available in the city.
Mr Hinds seemed to have wanted more than he was able to get from those around him, even though he was the Prime Minister. I think this might have been one of the reasons he said to me that leadership is a lonely road.
Now almost two years later, I am standing, listening to another political leader of the governing party voice the very same concern.
And I thought to myself, is it that President Granger, like Mr Hinds, wants things to go differently or faster than they are going? Is President Granger, like Samuel Hinds, more magnanimous and visionary than those in his inner circle? Is it that these men are not innate politicians but are forced to toe the politically correct line?
I am just an outside observer, a budding psychologist, trying to psychoanalyze the President. Maybe I will never find out why he said what he said. But this I know; I like what he said, for I am convinced that his thoughts find their origin in a beautiful mind.
Yours faithfully,
Wendell Jeffrey, Pastor
