By GHK Lall-I like a ‘free and fair’ process in anything. Free and fair elections, I am all for it. I support people’s right to endorse whoever they wish. Incidentally, this political term-to endorse, I endorse-what does it mean, for the endorser, the endorsee, and those jilted and abandoned? Not a political party, but the people. Now it’s back to free and fair. The two just can’t apply to polling day, counting day, and announcing day. Free and fair, when I think of the two together, must mean something. Just as much, prior to elections, and also what happens afterwards, as in the five years until the next circus and ice-cream cart roll into town.
Will somebody check developments involving the young fella, and say if that represents what is ‘free and fair’ in this democracy? It is one, isn’t t? In a true democracy, one where its ideals are held seriously, there is the highest respect for freedom of movement, freedom of association (political party), freedom of choice, freedom of speech, freedom to compete in an election. And, one more.
The freedom to shake any man’s hand. When those are given their rightful place of honour, then a country can speak of unity and harmony, of aiming high and going places. A young Guyanese businessman moves, going from community to community, engaging the people. Although his ultimate objectives weren’t clear before, they are now. Now that he has announced his candidacy for the presidency, the PPP has taken matters to lower levels.
Before his announcement, he was feared and detested, subjected to resistance and indignities. He is entitled to the same rights of citizens. Yet everywhere he goes, he draws a crowd of hopeful listeners, and a gang of disruptors that seems to be waiting to greet him. It’s the democracy that PPP leaders claim that exists, but this is how peaceful citizens are treated. Goons. Then a drone, then the GRA.
After a public tax brawl between the sitting president and the aspirant wishing to unseat him, there’s the ugliness involving a simple handshake. The world watches as Guyanese are violated, seemingly at the flick of a finger, in keeping with the will of leaders. With one flick of a switch inside the Guyana Police Force, a handshaking policeman is booted from his present station to another. Perhaps, the honorable Top Cop, Mr. Clifton Hicken would do the right thing and inform Guyanese if that transfer was part of a planned police rotation. In a genuine democracy, there would be a crowd in front of Eve Leary protesting that transfer action.
By way of a quick digression, I recall how Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton was almost torn to pieces for refusing to shake Pres. Ali’s hand. Right or wrong, that was in the realm of the bitter history of Guyana. Now, in an expression that speaks well to basic courtesy, a policeman shakes the hand of a presidential candidate, and he is sent from where he is stationed to another location in a split second. And they tell simple folk like me that the Police Force is its own master. Maybe it is a COVID precaution.
Taking all of these not so petty developments into consideration, the hard question must be asked. Is this a democracy in action, or demagoguery rearing its ugly head, showing how deformed it is, and how worse it promises to get? There was Lima Sands in one county, then Letter Kenny in another, and then after that in a place called Lake Capoey, back in the first county. Though the latter is the biggest space, it is no stranger to dispute and to government moves that expose it and imperil its residents, drain its treasures.
When Guyanese fear to assemble for the hammers that such action can bring down on their heads, then this country is in trouble. It cannot speak of democracy, but creeping tyranny. When residents in different locations cannot exercise their right to invite and welcome, not a traitor but a fellow citizen, then it is clear that this country has traveled a long way on the road of cheap, sleazy dictators. When bands of goons turn up out of thin air to interfere with a peaceful proceeding, then there is more than a hint of premeditated ill-will and malevolence, in the environment. There is democracy bent to kneel before rank political hypocrisy, pay homage to vulgarity that makes the skin crawl.
Imagine that! A handshake can cause a man wearing the uniform of the law to be nailed by what is lawless. There ought to be a law for things such as these. If Guyana’s chief lawman, General Nandlall is awake at the wheel, he may want to do something, say something. That is, if he still has some guts left.
