Dear Editor,
Christmas is in the air. The vendors don’t agree fully; not with petroleum and politics competing fiercely with the festivities. In enlightening times, and a less barbaric place, all three – Christmas, oil, and elections – hold so much if approached right, and when has that ever been? It begins and ends with putting the wellbeing of citizens first.
As I absorb the flurry of remedies for a feeble political system from feebler politicians, I share thoughts on what putting the interests of citizens first means. It starts with authentic interest and effort in engaging the people at the grassroots at arm’s length and face-to-face; not just at elections time, but continually. This recommended political closeness from the ground up identifies the hopes and fears, the dreams and anxieties, of the people left behind: those forgotten, those used and discarded, those treated with scant respect during regular times, but during elections hugged and kissed, fooled first, then abandoned. Once more. I say, also: spending tens of millions on television advertising is wonderful. But to what purpose? A 30-second soundbite that is about the negative of the other fellow only deepens divisions. Similarly, flyers given to crowds, banners plastered on lampposts, slogans painted on roadways do little of what is meaningful, what clicks within and stirs the ordinary man and woman. Those familiar local election gimmicks do absolutely nothing for the voting constituency, since most minds are routinely already settled long before. Yes, it is that kind of society.
Still, I suggest reaching for the people genuinely on a sustained basis, and make those same broad horizons of citizens feel that their voices count, their aspirations matter, and that they are vital to the process, not merely election condoms. The small man in the trenches have those concerns that are a priority to them, many of them, and which possess a certain commonality. By this, I speak of cores: jobs and job security; crime and personal security; taxes and financial security; the children and future security; and, to stretch things: freedoms and the psychological security they nurture.
Those things make a difference for families when political leaders listen carefully, look in the eye fully, and commit sincerely, to investing time, capital, and energies to making those same things achievable. Reaching for the bottom and lower middle consistently is the connective tissue that is so sadly missing when the emphases on the convenient escape routes of television and technology, the reciprocal enduring antagonisms and continuing ambushing of anonymous cyberspace, come to represent the essence of local democracy. By my thinking, democracy is that process where the many use a continuous process to probe for the broadest common ground from which to lift themselves to a higher and better place. Through repeat iterations, disappointments, setbacks, and failures; but with the staying power that something is present, which could lead somewhere.
It is why I am not impressed by manifestoes. For even in the best moments, the best of minds, and the best intentions, they fall short. And we are woefully short people: in scale and scope of inclusivity, in the blandness of the easy generalities that evidence the worst sales jobs from the worst kinds of salesmen. Any idiot can make promises; the problem is to mean them and keep them, through the unselfish sacrifices that must follow. Do we have that caliber of sacrificing people around here? I say almost none.
I say what we have are among the smoothest and slickest; those whose product looks good on paper and on air, but that is all there is to it: paper and air. For we are a paper and airy people constructed of thin, intangible characters. And that includes too many of the newcomers who announce their presences. To the doubters, I suggest interrogating their pasts. If they were of that nature then, what about now? What about the trust and confidence necessary to start in a different direction, if they were ever to get near to the intoxicants of power? It is disturbing in the contemplation, for if this is best that we have to offer, then the only place we are going is to the same damned place. I sense that when God wanted confidence tricksters off the streets of Guyana, he came up with an entity called the National Assembly. It has been a gallery of rogues for the largest part.I tender this: I can carve out a manifesto (perhaps better than most), but what do they matter when I am a crooked commodity myself? I submit the same thing for elections messages, postures, and proclamations: do they mean anything, when I am already hijacked by the interests that are not of either people at the bottom, or of the country at large, or the largest number? I can go on, but the point should register.
At every level, most corners and the greatest number of agents, this is the story of political Guyana: rancid, smelling with the heaviness of a funeral parlor, and promising the same degree of grieving continuity. Who will reach for the people because they really care about them and not the power and oil and what both represent? Who will be for them, with them, of them, when all of this is over, if it ever is? I think none, really. And that might be the fifth gospel, with apologies for the sacrilege.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
