Dear Editor,
“Are we nearing the light -a day of freedom and peace….? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?” Those words formed part of President Dwight Eisenhower’s first inauguration address way back in January 1952. I think they are crucial to the thinking, visions, and calculations of leaders on both sides of the local divide. There is the opportunity and circumstance for real leaders, real patriots to take a stand. To stand for something different; distinctively so.
We have had too many nights, all long and dark and forbidding. They will not let us forget. We have had too many rushing away in fear and disgust from this land of their birth; hurriedly shaking the dust off their feet. I passed on Friday by the US Embassy, and there was a woman surrounded by a handful of friends. She was weeping. Denied. And she was only in transit from this newly recognized springboard to greater and better things. She is foreign. But what of the locals?
Locals are now alternately cringing, crowing, anticipating, relishing, or reeling. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. For regardless of how the court decides, or how parliament continues, or how Gecom delivers, any result will reflect, once again, only the deep rancorous divide; only the pervasive animosities; only the grinding and grinning. Of what? For what? At the usual rate, and in the regular way, any electoral result is sure to confirm that “the shadows of another night closing in upon us.” Nothing would have changed: not mentalities, not outlooks, not the underlying issues, problems, and challenges that bedevil. We would be in the same place, singing the same songs, keening the same dirges. And then what? More of the same, this time under a different set of faces, a new set of phrases? What would have been achieved if the old stays, or the previous returns, as conditioned by the same political values, the same political practices, and the same political character? I say nothing. What could be achieved that is inclusive enough to comfort and give hope. I say not one damn thing. So, we celebrate failure to provide for the future, even as we shrink from living in the present by coming to grips with it, from the hard responsibilities and the great demands that are made of those who accept the mantle to lead. And those who follow, too, in the hope of gaining something momentary, material, monetary. They follow the leader, for that is the way it has always been.
What I keep pounding (and appealing and reasoning) in one Cri de Coeur after another is that this is the crossroad: It cannot be more of the familiar broad and inviting, as well as the comforting from the likeminded, too. The patient cannot endure more. Of necessity, as a matter of deliberate choice, the plug on the wheezing, the gnarled, and the unconscious must be pulled. Of necessity, it has to be the experimental, the untried, even the radical (by Guyana’s standards) to explore the possibility that another dark night occupied by the imagined and the disturbing will be evaded. That a corner could be turned; that this society has given itself a chance. Just by trying. An acid test of profound proportions it is.
I must be clear: there is no expectation that citizens will vote any other way than they have always done. But this is the moment that leaders across the board can embrace in the hope, the belief, the conviction that we are “nearing the light” as Dwight Eisenhower said. We can only be nearing the light (or making a start thereto) if men rise to the fateful hour that comes and take a stand for the different today; and not as has always been done in the past, for own kind, for own party, for one’s own self. This is the supreme challenge for Guyanese leaders and Guyanese citizens, wherever they are. This must be about country; not a fraction of it. This cannot be other than for all the peoples. This must be about maturity and statesmanship. It must be about self-sacrifice for the greater good. The greater good it has to be. If not, then there is no learning, no growing, no rising to meet the special occasion made possible by that no-confidence vote. There is neither ashes nor pyre for one side; and, unlike Savonarola, let there be no celebratory bonfire of the vanities taking hold of the next. This is not the day of triumphalism. Anyone who dares to propagate such is more than reckless, he or she is delusional. Look around at the faces set in granite and white heat. There is no budging. Minds and hearts have to be reconditioned; perhaps rebuilt from scratch. Are we, leaders and citizens ready to say: yes? Yes, I am ready. Yes, I will do my part. Yes, I commit. Yes, count on me.
“For history does not entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.” That was Eisenhower. It is our freedom we are fighting for; the freedom that has eluded for so long, to draw closer to where we ought to be. To give ourselves one iota of a chance. Can we not reach deep and be strong and bold, just this once when so much beckons?
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
