…model??
If you’re Guyanese surely, you’ve spent a good bit of your life wondering when our politicians will be able to bring peace and stability – and prosperity – to our dear Mudland. Ever since Burnham split the PPP nationalist movement– a scarce five years after it’d been launched in 1950 – he exploited our ethnic identities to keep us congealed into warring factions. Periodically, these factions erupt into violence that end up not only with dead bodies in the streets but deepening divisions.
What to do?? Well, we can do worse than look at how one poor colonised country ( colonised by Germany and Belgium) with even starker ethnic divisions did it. If you think we’re too violence-prone, this country had 800,000 of one ethnic group hacked to death by the competing ethnic group – and floated down the river!! Yet today, it’s regarded as one of the most stable democracies in Africa, making steady progress to climb out of poverty and becoming the toast of the developing world.
Your Eyewitness, of course, is talking about Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame showed up at the Caricom HoG meet to discuss opening up a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in the Caribbean. Guyana maybe – since we saw him huddled with President Ali?? Last year, even though Rwanda wasn’t a British colony, it was accepted into the Commonwealth and even hosted that organisation’s HoG meeting!! Our President did some more huddling with Kagame then!
Surely, he would’ve asked the latter how he was able to bring peace and stability to his country fractured along its Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. Back in 1994, it was the majority Hutu who’d massacred 800,000 of the minority Tutsi who’d ended up ruling the country – after being favoured by the colonial powers. It was Kagame leading a Tutsi force from neighbouring Congo who’d overthrown the Hutu Government and has been ruling ever since.
But didn’t your Eyewitness say Rwanda was a democracy?? Well, it is: Kagame’s been holding elections which his party – the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) – keeps winning!! Most government officials are Tutsis – even though Hutus are 80%. His most pertinent innovation has been TO BAN THE USE OF ETHNIC LABELS in public!! That’s right…folks can’t mobilise on ethnic lines – except on “Genocide Day”!! It’s One Rwanda down the line!! Like Lee Kwan Yu of Singapore, Kagame has been called “authoritarian” for cracking down on political types who don’t toe the line.
Rwanda has a “National Strategy for Transformation 2017-2024” within a “Vision 2050 with the goal of becoming a higher middle-income country by 2035 and a high-income one by 2050. Corruption is controlled, with Rwanda 52nd of 180 countries in the Corruption Index.
A hint to beneba…?
…example?
Guyanese politicians should take a leaf out of the American political playbook. US Secretary of State Blinken – who visited yesterday – is a Democrat and is locked in political combat with the Republicans whom they’ll face at the polls next year. His counterpart Pompeo – who visited back in 2020 – was Republican but you’ll never hear a word of criticism uttered by one against the other when they’re abroad!! While they may differ on specifics, those are kept within the US borders. Your Eyewitness hopes our Opposition’s taking note – especially with their Brooklyn posse.
Now talking about the latter, your Eyewitness noted that one Democratic American politician – House Democratic Leader Jeffries – broke that tradition and hopes he’s brought to heel by President Biden. It’s not anything he said – but what he did vis-à-vis President Ali. Last year, he’d refused to see the latter – at the urging of a PNC flack who’s close to him.
At the Caricom HoG meeting, Jeffries stared daggers at Pres Ali!!
…expansion?
The Caricom Heads of Government (inelegantly abbreviated to HoGs!!) have decided to move from “the freedom of movement of skills and service” to “free movement of people” in the organisation. However, Haiti bowed out. They don’t want folks flocking to their island??
