Brazil’s President Lula said it, so it should have significant resonance, weight, and traction with Guyana’s President Ali. Infrastructure is lovely, but the quality of life of the Guyanese people must also be of some similar cherished priority and value. The priority displayed by the PPP Government in the building of structures, that same devotion to duty must be manifested when the building up citizens is the issue standing before governors and policymakers.
The leader from Brasilia, with a touch of Rio in him, was helpful: he saw the local buildings and great public works. They tower over the landscape, dot the trek from airport to accommodations. He was suitably impressed. Thanks for the canvas of the manmade wonders of Guyana, Dr. Ali. He wouldn’t be Lula, if he forgot to remember the other side of the infrastructure equation. The ole socialist in him would not allow him to distance himself from the people, discard them like yesterday’s voters. Do something of value for the people.
Unasked by any media inquirer, President Lula, spoke of what Brazil did for its unionized workers (“Brazil’s President boast higher salaries through collective bargaining”, Demerara Waves, March 1st). There had to be a hidden message somewhere in there, the gentlest of nudges in the direction of teachers immediately, and public servants later. Excellencies Ali and Jagdeo, is this being heard, registering deep down, and genuinely?
I have repeatedly called for the exact same thing before, but scorned and mocked for efforts: an enemy, a calumny, and a tyranny. The appeal has been simple: Arrange visions and plans for visible infrastructure to go hand in hand with invisible people. They would not be those Guyanese in the Brazilian’s official welcoming party. Nor those in the hidden impoverished masses, who were not encountered by Lula on the way to Georgetown.
In my own non-Brazilian accents, my repeated recommendations have been of this nature: do a little less for projects, do a little more for the people. Not the people on top at Freedom House and Office of the President, but those who could use a helping hand to lift them up from where they are. For my troubles, the labels of renegade, subversive, and alien have been affixed. I embrace them all and persist.
Excellency Ali has the luxury of giving me the back of his hand for advocating as I have done. He should have wised up by now that that practice would result in negative returns, should he dare to try that with the fine recent visitor, the newfound brother, from Brazil. I take off my gloves and shake President Ali’s hand for cultivating a closer and closer bond with President Lula, and the regional superpower. A neighbor of many a helpful deed is a friend indeed.
On second thoughts, due to fear of contamination, the gloves are kept on. It is nothing personal against President Ali, merely the squeamishness prompted by viral fears. It is certain that he will understand. It is just as guaranteed that the strategy of nurturing a tighter relationship with Brazil is understood by all Guyanese, and by that anti-Guyanese friend from across the northwestern border. Is nah me call Maduro fren, check de record and see if is nah Jagdeo who did something similar in substance during the glorious post Chavez days.
The best way for the best results with the new best man found by the PPP midwives is to listen to him. Balance. Honesty. Duty. A best man can be a best friend for life. But it is a two-way street, which could be a difficulty for the increasingly foxy Ali. His Excellency Lula did not want to leave behind the favelas on the hills of fabulous Rio de Janeiro and then run into their equivalents here on the prairies of Guyana. We don’t call them shantytowns, but squatting areas or ghettos or hoods. For Senhor Lula, a change of scenery must be precisely that – a change of depressing scenery. So that President Ali could understand very clearly what President Lula (and I) is saying, it is do more, do better, do well by the people. It is not in the scanty single-digit considerations that have become so chic with the PPP. It is working at honoring collective bargaining and not working around it.
It is doubtful that Small Brother Excellency Ali will so much as deign to listen to his newer, bigger, bulkier Brazilian brother. But that is his call, and he toys with troubles, when he doesn’t listen. I leave the Guyana president with these two morsels of common wisdom: all the firepower in the world cannot surpass the power of the people. All the horsepower of mulish leaders cannot compete with the power of an outraged populace. Demagogues know this. History has proven it, time and again. Give the people something [more] is what Lula was saying very tactfully. Don’t worry about what I say or pen. But make every citizen of this country feel that they have a patrimony. That is neighborly. It is brotherly too.
President Lula has spoken frankly, yet with tasteful tactfulness. What will it be President Ali? The teachers and public servants are watching and waiting. Collective bargaining cannot go on languishing, a victim of political leadership trampling.
