Interim governance – one year is too short

Dear Editor,

A couple of months ago, I repeated calls from decades ago for what I envision is the temporary solution of an interim governance structure. Recently, a few more voices have joined with their own calls for something similar. I think that this is encouraging and recognises where we are stuck and what gives a chance to survive as a nation. I say this regardless of what are our positions, or for whom our votes were cast.

I am moved that others now associate with what my position has always been: neither party would be allowed to rule smoothly, given the cauldron that blows so much racial heat at this time. No single party could rule peacefully and efficiently. To repeat that now familiar Guyanese wisdom: “dis time nah lang time”. Dis time gat lethal assets. Dis time gat unprecedentedly infuriated mindsets. In more conventional English, the tools, motivations, and wills are there.

Selfish politicians and helpers ignore or dismiss, somewhat confident that they would prevail. They must be forgiven, for they know not what they do; though I think that they do. Most have too much at stake to give up anything; I don’t.
Regardless, there are these continual calls today for a year of such an interim governance arrangement to find a way out of the impasses. Impasse is a word so much used here that now it lacks meaning. I disagree on the limitation of a year or even that of a year and a half. It is too short and against what is my assessment of local realities and the commonsense that flows from such.

Think of this: the first year alone would be needed to hyperventilate about who is responsible for the back alley brawl and the seizure that now stand as testimony to the radioactive no man’s land, from which none could emerge cleanly or intact. A whole year would be needed for quarreling and fighting over the mechanics of such thinking and tinkering. A year would be needed to arrange acceptable mediators and helpers. That is, if they have not washed their hands and shaken the dust off their feet in disgusted distancing from this unholy place. I am of here, and love here, and I done so. More and more, I get the impression that outsiders want no part of this place, including CARICOM. I continue.

Then, after the mechanics have been somewhat settled, the players have to be determined. Now there is a can of snakes, which regrettably I must extend to encircle most political newcomers. I do so because their histories are not shrouded, but too much like the old well-known cloths, meaning the PPP and PNC. But it has to be more than shared, governance, with inclusiveness in its broadest sense being the sensible scale, which is our extended Catch-22. To succeed is to end up with the same crooks. Look at what is there: The ranks of the private sector and the spiritual sector look most barren: too tainted and too compromised, which is the sorry state of Guyana. Since those are wide areas, not much is left.

I would like to point to the professional, the close and remote diaspora, and Guyanese academics. I come up woefully short. If they are different from one side or the other in terms of appearance, then they are leprous, shunning follows. If they ever uttered one opinion, or publicly favoured one side, then they are doomed, as in untouchable. So, this country is doomed, because wherever we look-civil class, professional class, or thinking class – our men and women are condemned to hard distrusts and degrading fate.

As evidence, I tender the compromise and now suspected comprised figure of the hapless Chairwoman of GECOM. Ah, what a tangled Gordian web we weave in the unknottable intricacies of circumstances nurtured. My recommendation would be to lock the two leaders alone in a room and throw away the key; they are allowed to come out when they arrive at some position of compromise and cooperation. In the meantime, no food and water; and if I really had my way, no toilets either. But fat chance any of this happening.

Once again, and this is unwelcomed by me, I detect that foreign minds and hands will have to be summoned to lift us out of our cradles. That is an indication of how helpless we are. Since they already virtually govern our elections process, they might as well be called upon to teach us how to govern ourselves.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall