Overseas the news is grim. War in Ukraine, world food shortages, soaring energy prices, inflation, substantial cost-of-living increases and the like. Some of those apply here too, but our political operators have a unique capacity to generate fatuous headlines which quite obscure the heavyweight topics consuming the attention of politicians elsewhere. This time Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton has got himself into the news, not because of any policy stance he has taken on the grave issues confronting the country, but because he refused to shake the hand of the President of Guyana. Twice.
The first time it happened was at a diplomatic reception hosted by UK High Commissioner Jane Miller. Following the snub President Irfaan Ali told this newspaper: “He [Mr Norton] did not want to shake my hand but I have no place for pettiness. This is a social forum … so I told him ‘Shake my hand. We are mature people.’” On his side the Opposition Leader was full of wordy justifications. “[T]he President turned up with a set of cameras … I wasn’t even looking in his direction. He turned to me and apparently had his hand outstretched and he turned to me and asked me if I don’t want to shake his hand and I said no. He then proceeded to, what I consider to be bullyism, and we ended up shaking hands, but I want to make it clear that first of all, I cannot treat this as business as usual.”
Shaking hands is bullyism? This is enough to send the wags of the capital into a paroxysm of guffaws. It is not that bullyism does not exist in our political universe, but can it really describe the Leader of the Opposition being cornered into a handshake? If he thinks it does then he is far too sensitive for the job he has taken on. And then there is the statement that he cannot treat this as business as usual. It seems a handshake now equates to a major political misfortune. This is Lilliputian politics indeed.
The second occasion was at an Emancipation Day event in New Amsterdam. When President Ali arrived at the market place he went through the usual acknowledgements greeting people with handshakes and hugs. When it came to Mr Norton and three others with him, however, they all refused to shake the President’s hand. The Opposition Leader gave the head of state a cursory nod, following which the latter went to his seat. President Ali would have been well advised to leave the issue there because it spoke for itself, but instead he took to moralising on the subject. It certainly reflected very poorly on the Opposition Leader, but more on his want of manners, insecure grasp of convention and absence of political understanding than on his lack of ethics per se.
This time the President was quoted as saying: “If we can’t dance with each other, if we can’t hug each other, if we can’t shake each other’s hands, then how can we uplift each other?” He later went on to refer to the “Guyanese family”, and said: I never, ever want us to lead a country in which my little son must grow up or your little children must grow up ashamed and afraid to shake each other’s hands. That is disgusting and disrespectful and must never ever get seed to grow up in this country.”
Mr Norton was no less voluble on this occasion than he had been on the earlier one. This time it was at an address to a rally held by APNU+AFC and the WPA at Burnham Court where he explained to his audience the reason he would not shake hands with the President. Previously he had said he would not shake hands as a form of protest over the government’s management of the country, and he expanded this to say that he would not relent until the government addressed the issues of the oppressed and there was tangible evidence that a “collective effort” was being made to resolve them. “I shake hands, but I do not shake hands with my oppressors …” he was quoted as saying.
The Opposition Leader alluded to the fact that some people had expressed the view that his refusal to shake the President’s hand was childish and puerile and that a leader must observe “protocol and decorum” when handshakes were offered. However, he said his conscience would not allow him to do it, and he was certain that his critics would understand why if they went into the villages and saw what the regime was doing.
Actually they wouldn’t. They would just wonder what refusing to shake hands had to do with the state of the villages. The least that can be said is that he and the President are on the same page where morality is concerned. The President has made the refusal a moral issue, and so has Mr Norton, albeit applying a different moral perspective. This makes them unusual; as mentioned earlier most of the rest of the world sees it as a matter of courtesy, protocol, convention and political sensibility. One has to wonder too, that if shaking hands (or not) is moral turpitude, then how do acts of corruption rank? It would all have moral philosophers in a tiz-woz.
“You shake hands when somebody is nice to you, when it cordial and there is friendship,” said the Opposition Leader; “You do not shake the hand of those who seek to oppress you, and I say that without fear of contradiction.” He should fear contradiction. In the international arena statesmen who are foes, who can’t stand each other, who are convinced their nations have been wronged by the other party, sometimes in circumstances where lives have been lost, still shake hands. It is standard international protocol. It is also standard practice within democracies. Bad manners are not a legitimate form of protest; they will solve nothing, they will open no avenues to dialogue or negotiation and they will leave the perpetrators appearing ignorant, weak and lacking direction.
Mr Norton, unintentionally, no doubt, is conveying the impression that he has never come off the barricades, and has never made the leap from street tactics to the arts of negotiation. There is plenty to address in terms of the actions of the current government, but a lack of common courtesy in public, non-political situations will not achieve any headway in improving the lot of ordinary Guyanese or produce the necessary amendments in critical areas. That requires an entirely different approach, in the first instance involving work, information, clear thinking and a certain sophistication.
And when does Mr Norton think he can return to observing internationally and nationally recognised protocols again? Not at all in this parliamentary term one is tempted to believe. He appears to be in permanent campaign mode, which will achieve nothing for his constituency in the three years to the next general election. He has just picked the best route to undermining his own position; the PPP/C could not have done better if it tried.
Perhaps the Opposition Leader is lucky that not since the days of Boysie Ramkarran has the PPP ever displayed a sense of humour. What is he going to do at the next diplomatic gathering, or the one after that? Is he going to take look-outs with him so they can keep an eye on the President’s moves and he has warning to dodge the outstretched hand whenever it threatens to come too close? It would make wonderful satire.
But then again, perhaps Guyana’s satirists would say the same thing as the host of a British satirical comedy show about the news, which was closed down after seventeen years on air. When asked about the closure he said: “We just couldn’t be more silly than the news was already.”
