As the 50th independence celebration will undoubtedly lead to sobering and introspective reflections on how poorly placed the country is after five decades as a free nation we mustn’t unnecessarily add to this burden by unthinking behaviour.
It should be the hope of all Guyanese here and abroad that the deep symbolism of independence will provide a wellspring of togetherness from which a truer national unity can be melded and everyone can recommit to the challenge of taking the nation and the country forward. So, even though great political and ethnic cleavages remain they must be acknowledged and confronted, not dismissed and left to fester.
Which is why the contretemps over the recent pre-eminence of yellow and green – the colours of the governing APNU+AFC coalition – should not be dismissed as simply jaundiced views or as sour grapes. Even though the complaints have come in the main from the PPP/C which has little credibility in these matters, the larger issue at stake cannot be so easily ignored. The governing coalition could well argue that exuberant supporters have gotten ahead of themselves and this is why boats and buses have been emblazoned with the hues of green and yellow and why plants put down along the divider on the East Coast have been fenced with tyres painted white along with the same yellow and green. Even if that were the case, it behoved the coalition to ensure that it exercised a modicum of judgement. Its supporters should be told that in a year of national celebration it is the intention that all shades of the political and other spectra be incorporated into every aspect of the beautifying of the city and the cleansing of the collective consciousness. This is not to say that the colours of all the political parties are to be used in these jobs but that even decisions about paint should be sensitive to inclusivity rather than reflexively reductive.
There is of course another evident reason for caution and which both of the major partners in the governing coalition are acutely aware of. The main constituent of APNU, the PNCR, in its incarnation as the PNC, launched off on the most offensive notion of paramountcy of the party via the Sophia Declaration of 1974. At the height of this folly, the party colours flew at the Guyana Court of Appeal building and the party card became like a passport and national ID all rolled into one. Why would a coalition elected less than a year ago on the wings of great expectations of upending the debased culture and doing things differently not perceive immediately the appearance of a problem? The AFC in its days as a wedge between the two major groupings: PPP/C and the PNCR, must also have gleaned the beginnings of a problem. Are there regular meetings between the two main coalition partners to address issues of concern and shouldn’t the public be kept aware of these and their outcome?
In light of the comprehensive failure to date of APNU+AFC to begin anticipated, productive dialogue with the opposition PPP/C in the interest of nation-building, particularly as the 50th anniversary of independence draws nearer, the governing coalition must eschew any act which denotes petty partisanship or further deepens painful clefts. Which is why the one-upmanship which has attended the the closure of the Rodney Commission of Inquiry is to be deprecated. The Attorney General, Mr Basil Williams has lost no time in making known his exasperation and that of the Presidency with the minutiae of the wrapping up and handing over of the final report by the presidential commission of inquiry. His outlook is redolent of an unwillingness to accept that whereas he had once been an advocate protecting the interest of the PNCR during the proceedings, he has since been elevated to the executive where his role is quite different and where due deference must be accorded to the CoI which remains one convened by the President despite the fact that Mr Donald Ramotar is no longer in office. The statement issued on Saturday by Chairman of the Commission of Inquiry, Sir Richard Cheltenham and commissioner Seenath Jairam is particularly troubling as it contends that even at the Ministry of the Presidency its efforts for the presentation of the report were met with disinterest. As much as the governing APNU+AFC may be disinclined to treat with the report because of the potential liability to a key constituent, the PNCR, it cannot shirk the responsibility of the executive to receive and address the report neither can it be oblivious to the reality that a large segment of the public is interested in the findings of this inquiry and the longstanding dilemma of the fate of then WPA leader and historian, Dr Walter Rodney.
This again raises the question of the internal dynamics of this coalition and whether it evinces the characteristics of one that will be addressing its differences in an open and mature manner or it will begin veering in the direction of dominance by its larger and more assertive parts. The handling of the Rodney CoI should have incensed the WPA which is a member of APNU. While quite vocal in the last five years in the opposition, the WPA is now strangely mute. It has been unable to issue a public statement on the question of salary increases for Cabinet members and representation on matters related to the Rodney inquiry has been largely left to individual members. But what of the AFC? Surely its leading members given their long association with the opposition of the 1970s and 80s and the repression of that era would be of the persuasion that the death of Dr Rodney is deserving of the fullest exegesis and that it is the duty of this executive to address the report without a hint of the sourness of political partisanship.
For all of its lofty and high-browed declarations of the importance of the 50th independence anniversary celebrations, the governing coalition has to show greater recognition of how to give meaning to being all-inclusive and not allowing historic fault lines to trip it up.
