It would be by no means surprising if the populace, by now, has given up altogether on the likelihood of our arrival at a juncture, any time soon, when elected government and political opposition, both of which have constitutionally designated roles to play in the governance process, will understand that it is not a matter of whether or not, given their diametrically opposed political positions, they would probably prefer not to have to sit down with each other, but rather, a matter of their obligation, at intervals, to do so. That, as it happens is an obligatory feature of the governance process.
Over time, discourses between the two major political sides have been relegated to the level of theatre and grandstanding, to a point where these engagements have completely lost their substantive public interest. Frankly, upon reflection, it is difficult to determine just what substantive purpose these discourses have served in bringing about any kind of qualitative enhancement in the national governance. Indeed, a great many observers of the process may well have long concluded that these government/opposition exchanges at the level of the President and the Leader of the Opposition are, in fact, no more than part of the country’s ‘silly (political) season characterized mostly by forms of communication that are no more (or less) than excursions into political cat-sparring. It is at these junctures that our political process enters the realm of the absurd.
Public expectations (or hopes) of positive outcomes from these constitutionally dictated engagements between the President of the Republic and the Leader of the Opposition may well, under different circumstances, provide, arguably, a more than moderately useful forum for ventilating and settling some of our more challenging differences, political and otherwise, and even arriving at a modus vivendi on important policy issues. If these engagements were able to serve this purpose they might even have the effect of circumventing much of the angst that usually obtains on the more crowded political stage. As it happens there is evidence that the main political constituencies are simply too far apart, too steeped in an embedded vitriolic setting to suddenly effect a miraculous u-turn. No one, as far as we are aware, is even wildly optimistic about the likelihood that one of these days, soon, those engagements between the President and the Opposition Leader will reach arrive at a modus vivendi on some of the issues of national/political importance that are sufficiently critical to become harbingers of serious substantive change. It is as if the principals on both sides simply cannot conceive of these engagements between the President and the Opposition Leader as having the capacity to impact significantly on the mainstream governance process. It is, it seems, a matter of both sides being too set in their ways to think that far ahead.
Were we to seriously contemplate the historic pattern of these engagements what we are bound to recognize is that their ‘value’ has reposed not so much in their potential for the realization of useful outcomes but in the stage that it offers for trifling political gamesmanship that is of no serious national value. Put differently – and however much the protagonists may seek to persuade us to the contrary – these engagements have been, in large measure, little more than battlegrounds on which political skirmishes that are microcosms of long-embedded differences occur and where they are won and lost. That is how the protagonists see that forum.
There is already reason to believe that the likelihood of the forthcoming engagement between Presi-dent Ali and Opposition Leader Norton will probably not go as smoothly as it otherwise might have done. Mr. Norton appears to be piqued over what he regards as the protocolar improperness of the announcement that the President will meet with him ‘in two weeks time,’ pointing out that he is yet to receive any formal notification to this effect. His observation is then followed by a seemingly trite comment with regard to assumptions that inhere in the “two weeks time” pronouncement about his own possible alternative timetable. There is as yet no telling just how this will affect the meeting though the portents may well give cause for some measure of concern as to when the meeting will actually take place and whether the atmosphere for engagement might not, already, have been somewhat soured.
As it happens, what would appear to be a somewhat untidy start to communication between the two sides on the matter of the timing of the meeting between President Ali and Mr. Norton could very easily provide that slippery slope that could set much of the tone for the meeting itself, whenever it occurs.
What we must hope, of course, is that both Presi-dent Ali and Mr. Norton can, personally, make public their desire for engagement at the earliest possible time based on an agenda that will seriously attract and interest the country as a whole. Who knows whether the newness of both men to their respective positions of leadership might not prove ground-breaking in terms of both the atmosphere in which they engage and the outcomes of the engagement.
