With Guyana in the throes of our Sept 1st elections campaign, our populace is being bombarded by exhortations from the six parties vying for the prize of Government. They are in dire need of some wisdom to guide them. We select a quotation from Hillel the Elder, one of the early Jewish rabbis: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
To evaluate all the manifesto promises or pledges, the elector must begin with himself or herself: “If I am not for myself, who is for me?” There is nothing selfish about this. Before every flight takes off, passengers are instructed that in the event of a mishap, they should FIRST put on their own oxygen mask before doing the same for even their child. If you do not take care of yourself, then you cannot help yourself and become a burden on society. Analogously, on the campaign promises, one should question what the various parties would do to fulfil your desire to live the good life. Being careful, of course, to discern whether the promises are not “pie in the sky” but grounded in realistic plans with the promisor having a track record of keeping their word.
But the second question – “And if I am only for myself, what am I?” – tells you that “no man is an island”. We are all connected and have a simultaneous responsibility to all others in our society. This second exhortation is one that most of us ignore, locked as we are in the solipsistic notion that we are all that matters rather than we are what we are because of others and that our destinies are intertwined. In Guyana, we have fallen into the rut of making decisions of wider import where we only think of our ethnic group while ignoring the reality that this position has not taken us forward. Just as there is nothing wrong about thinking about oneself, there is nothing wrong about thinking of one’s group – by whatever criteria one chooses to define one’s group. But at every level of abstraction, one has to factor in the impact on others at that level.
We have to become our brothers’ keepers – for our own well-being. The reality is that our society is like an ocean in which all individual citizens (and the groups they chose to identify with) are swimming. If the ocean is poisoned by actions that keep some of us in thraldom, then we will eventually all suffer, if not perish. It behoves us, therefore, to insist that the parties vying for office present and practise a programme of equality of opportunity in all areas of their manifestos.
During the election campaign, therefore, we have to look at which party has demonstrated in its actions over time a concern for ALL groups in the society. If we are objective, this is the explicit stance of only the PPP/C in its pursuit of creating what it calls “One Guyana”. Sadly, the major opposition party – the PNC/APNU – has become embroiled in the machinations of one of its paper coalition partners – the WPA – pushing the insidious and ironic proposition that African Guyanese are their property. And if members of this group join other parties – especially the PPP – they are “slave catchers” and “ass lickers”.
Hillel’s last question was “And if not now, when?” Meaning that we cannot remain locked in a Hamlet-like internal debate on “To be or not to be”. In terms of selecting which party can best be entrusted to take our country forward for the next five years, we will have to decide now where we will place our “X” on the ballots. As far as this paper is concerned, we do believe that the choice is a “no-brainer”.
The People’s Progressive Party Civic has demonstrated that it has the plans and the personnel to continue developing Guyana for the next five years.
