Where's the silver lining?
The reflections on the future at this stage of the average Guyanese who is not a political activist are as follows. First, an election is due by January 200l. Many sensible and well-informed people feel all the necessary preparations cannot be completed in time. But Mr Desmond Hoyte, the leader of the main opposition party, has said that that date is not negotiable and that if elections cannot be held by then this government must not remain in power. He did not go on to spell out an alternative. Does that mean more protests and trouble lie ahead? In any event, an election will be held some time next year even if not in January. Ethnic voting patterns will almost certainly have hardened as a result of the events that followed the last election. Accordingly, the likelihood is that the small parties, including any new ones, will get very few votes and unless perhaps the PNC can offer some new faces with a vote pulling capacity the PPP will secure a majority and the PNC about 42% of the vote. Will that lay the basis for a stable government or will there be more trouble? As part of the same issue, can the election be held efficiently and in such a way as to avoid controversy. Will economic development be possible given the political climate and the fears of local and foreign businessmen in view of their recent experiences with strikes and protests? Can the `dispute' with Suriname be settled and the CGX oil rig be brought back to explore? What other investment is on the horizon? And what is President Chavez up to, will he do anything rash after he is re-elected. Is our Minister of Foreign Affairs at all capable of dealing with these problems? Guyanese have been in the doldrums for too long. Even the most committed of them talk openly now of their doubts about the future and the possibility of emigration. Almost without exception they desperately want peace, jobs, good schools for their children and a chance to get ahead in life. For the last 30 years there has been stagnation. Their country is now one of the poorest in the hemisphere. And the political bickering and infighting continues, endlessly. That is roughly how Guyanese think. Add an ethnic slant and that is what they are talking about in the streets, at the work place and at cocktail parties. Can the silver lining be found among all these grey clouds? A combination of the cold war, rash policies, poor governance and ethnic politics have led us to this sorry pass. We are faced with the task of reconstruction and nation building. The energy required is not now obviously there. Too much of it is still being spent on fighting each other. It is clear that at the very least, consensus must be sought on certain issues. These include the need for a well run election, a willingness to work together on maintaining our territorial integrity, the need for investment and the concomitant need for political stability. All of these, of course, are issues that could and should have been discussed in the political dialogue envisaged by the Herdmanston Accord, which could have led to some sort of concordat spelling out broad areas of agreement and a code of political behaviour. Regrettably, that dialogue never really got going and has aborted. The old beggar-my-neighbour politics is still in full swing and opposition is unbounded. Insofar as the Herdmanston Accord in l998 sought a more lasting solution to our problems it may well have failed. The constitutional reform process, still incomplete, was inadequate and disappointing though there will be some useful changes. And the dialogue failed. Those were the two main mechanisms. The best hope now, in terms of damage control at least, must be a well run election and new investment that will relieve the poverty that undergirds all our problems.
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