There are those who are hell bent in supporting this regime thinking that it is the best hope for Guyana’s future. They truly believe in the regime’s 100 days manifesto and are willing to wait until hell freezes over for it to deliver. Their echoing words are: We ask for your trust and patience. In reality, this askance is rhetorical downplaying the regime’s eccentricities and wrongdoings. This I understand but do not endorse.
There are those who chastise others for opposing this regime believing that those who speak against this regime automatically support the PPP. Their position is that anyone who supports the PPP supports Indian interests, supports ethnic exclusivity, supports corruption, and supports malice towards the AFC’s 11 per cent votes from the PPP, among other things. Again, this I understand but do not endorse.
The “those” I am referring to are the doctors, lawyers, politicians, commentators, columnists, lecturers, forensic spin doctors, and minions, among others. Of course, some of them are more rachitic thinkers than others but they share a fundamental similarity, that is, they represent the so-called big fish small pond syndrome. In the local parlance what this means is that when horses are not around donkeys win races. Got it!
Unfortunately, this style has become a way of life in Guyana and has effectively roped in the Diaspora, many of whom are desperate to dispense with the labyrinth of daily struggles in their mainly Brooklyn/Queens base. Luckily, the gravy train has come to them rather than them coming to the gravy train. Many are roosting on the lap of the regime, and yes, at the expense of tax-payers. How else can one explain the position of 34 unknown political advisors to the coalition regime?
What I am not referring to, unfortunately, is the ordinary people who cast their votes last year and whose voices are waiting and wanting to be heard. This is the sadistic aspect of Guyana’s political reality. There is no indication that this will change in the near future.
What I do not understand is that avid supporters of the regime claim that they are activists, transformative writers, leaders and the like. That is their right and prerogative. But while I do not wish to belabour the obvious, I understand activists to be individuals who speak and take action on issues, not sides. Some openly declared that they voted for this regime but they also claim they are activists. Isn’t this a contradiction? Isn’t this hypocritical? Isn’t this triumphalism?
More worrying is that it will be unhelpful to cavalierly dismiss these individuals as pariahs and parasites of society barnacled to stoic views. What is more important is to examine the impact of their intended message, their agenda, and their ideology, if there is one. This is more productive, although there might be nothing to be gained from this approach since as the saying goes empty vessels make a lot of noise.
Taken together, these individuals share a spurious rhetoric of mutuality. They are conflict habituated. They are self-haters. The question to be asked is this: In what ways does the encounter with other ideas, other people change the ways these individuals think about themselves, about the society they live in, and about those younger ones who are aspiring to be columnists?
I am willing to wait for answers.
Meanwhile I think a conference on columnists in Guyana is not a waste thought. If anything at all, it would avoid, I argue, what Cuban freedom fighter Jose Marti once said. Those who foments, those who propagates antagonism and hate between ethnicity, between race, sins humanity.
Let me also add what Mahatma Gandhi once said. To find one self is to lose interest in the service of others.
