A different plane

Editorial
Stabroek News
October 31, 1999


The horizon is not looking all that rosy in the Co-operative Republic. The economy is in the doldrums and the evidence of poverty and hardship is all around. It may be an erroneous impression, but there also appear to be more people of unsound mind roaming the streets of the capital than was the case before. More people, perhaps, who cannot cope with the stress of living here, and who have simply switched off mentally to exist on another plane. For the rest of us, there is no escaping the daily grind and the endlessly bickering politicians.

It remains one of the mysteries of the universe as to why politicians themselves don't get tired, when they positively exhaust everyone else. Take the exchange between President Jagdeo and Mr Hoyte, for instance. Flushed with his new appointment, the President almost immediately extended an unconditional invitation to the opposition leader to meet and discuss problems. Shrewd move, said the pundits. Thank God for youth, said the rest of us. A long silence then ensued, although Mr Hoyte did eventually reply on October 14, albeit in a vein which had a more familiar ring to it than was comfortable.

After a preamble reflecting the PNC leader's concern as to whether the President had been invested by his party with the necessary authority to deliver on any agreement with the opposition, Mr Hoyte's letter then went on to itemize what were described as "confidence-building measures" which should be implemented as a prelude to a meeting. These, he said, would "send a powerful signal and go a far way towards creating a favourable climate and demonstrating the requisite good faith." One of them - and there were several - asked that the Land Selection Committees be reconstituted to reflect a more equitable political balance.

Mr Jagdeo interpreted these measures as pre-conditions, and reiterated that he was prepared to meet Mr Hoyte without any pre-conditions, a sentiment which was echoed by the Caricom leaders in Chaguaramas during the Heads of Government meeting. But, expostulated Mr Hoyte at a press conference on Wednesday, no pre-conditions had been set by him; he had, as stated above, merely made reference to "confidence-building measures." On Friday, the President responded at his own press conference saying he was willing to discuss the issues raised by the opposition leader in his letter, but not as pre-conditions. Referring to the composition of the land selection committees, Mr Jagdeo said that the PPP/Civic would not give up control of these.

Before anyone (except the politicians, that is) ever got the length of trying to figure out what was, and what was not a pre-condition, or who was empowered by whom to talk to whom, or how it could be said that the matter of Land Selection Committees was open for discussion when the President had announced a decision on them in advance of that discussion, or why it was two men could not simply meet one another like other people do, the populus had switched off. With wisdom born of long experience, the citizens turned their over-burdened attention to more pressing matters, like on which date pay-day would fall this month and whether enough money could be scraped together to meet the cost of little Johnny's extra lessons.

There is no point in analysing why the PNC leader had to introduce so many legalisms into the story to send the initiative for a Jagdeo-Hoyte encounter off the rails for the time being, and to eventually corner an inexperienced President into making a blooper of his own; suffice it to say that he did the people of this country no service. And don't ask where we go from here; the cul-de-sac is not about to be transformed into a boulevard with a view. Personalities in office may change, but the political culture is this nation's most durable characteristic. Add to that fact the missed opportunity of the constitution reform process, and only the most irredeemable optimist would be upbeat about the future.

For all of that human beings insist on hoping, otherwise they would not be human beings. They hope that the Government would seek out some real talent to help it, for example, and abandon the loyalty test, and that the opposition would put forward some carefully crafted alternative policies, for example, and forget the endless rhetoric. Things will change, of course, if only because the world is changing, and Guyana cannot be insulated from the trends taking place in the global village. But don't be impatient; nothing will happen in time for the new millennium. Our politicians operate on a different plane from the rest of us.


A © page from:
Guyana: Land of Six Peoples