TRUSTING each other forms the firmest foundation for us to build harmonious co-existence. To design our society so we achieve our optimal potential, we must choose to trust ourselves.Our Guyanese society suffers from a political history stooped in distrust, dividing us into antagonistic camps. Our body politic limps along with this dysfunction, and the solution to the problem is simple: we must nurture a national culture of trust.

What would it take to nurture the Guyanese body politic to the sophisticated state where we trust each other, where we look at each other seeing that common quest beating in our breasts to heal our land of its historical wounds, and to elevate us to our legendary potential?

Today, we’re caught in the rough and tumble of an elections season because the Opposition refuses to trust the freely and fairly elected Government of President Donald Ramotar.

With the majority in the 10th Parliament, the Opposition distrusted every single move of President Ramotar, claiming he was a puppet Head-of-State of former President, Bharrat Jagdeo, and that he was weak. They refused to trust the President as a leader of character, who had risen to the highest office in the land, itself no mean feat.

Underlying this negativity and unworkable national atmosphere of irrational pessimism that emanated from the halls of Parliament was this presupposition of distrust.

The Opposition filled the Guyanese national social space with harsh plosive words and rants and rows alleging corruption in every single Government project, stifling any development initiative the President proposed and embarked upon.

We became a nation stooped in distrust, disharmony and disunity.

Government’s efforts to nurture a relationship built on trust, collaboration, cooperation and constructive engagement met with the distrust of the Opposition, who wanted absolute dominance of the State.

President Ramotar became President because he exercised the leadership skill, people engagement and political acumen, not only to win in the nomination process within the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), but also to come out victorious at national polls in 2011.

Even if powerful former President Jagdeo endorsed and supported him, this was due to President Ramotar’s political wisdom and practical leadership character. It’s not easy to become leader of a nation: it calls for enormous people-skill and political insight and judgment.
We ought to take our hats off to President Ramotar, this humble, open, cool President, who disregards the mountain of negativism and criticisms that bedeviled his first term of office as President. He’s weathered all the storms, and comes out victorious, with Guyanese today seeing him for his outstanding leadership quality, his deep love for this nation, his tireless work to connect and engage with grassroots community, and his inner strength and resolve to not stoop to the defeatist distrust of his detractors.

If we want to construct a national atmosphere of trust and openness, the first step is to trust our Head-of-State, our President, who is freely and fairly elected. Once we trust him and support his developmental efforts, we extend such trust to the Government and State.

From that point of reference, standing on the firm foundation of our choice to trust our leaders, we then proceed to nurture a national atmosphere that inspires, motivates and energises the Guyanese citizen to build our nation.

We are human beings, full of flaws and frailties and imperfections. President Ramotar is not ruling a utopian Guyana. Our society, like every human society, harbours deep problems and structural failings. We are a work in progress.

In fact, we’re now emerging from a two-decade long recovery phase to eradicate the ripple effect of the 1964 – 1992 dictatorship, which left us in gross poverty and socio-economic ruin.

If Government says it seeks social justice in convening the Rodney Commission to probe the circumstances and conditions that caused our great historian and scholar Dr Walter Rodney’s bomb-blast political assassination in 1980, then let’s trust the State’s sincerity. After all, it’s time we deal with this nasty historical wound that festers on the global stage, staining the image of the Guyanese national conscience.

We saw vociferous distrust deconstruct the image of the Guyanese nation, making us out to be a people corrupt, crass, unable to get our act together. Opposition politicians and discontented, disgruntled national commentators collared a myopic and pessimistic national media to batter the Guyanese social space with words of distrust, disregarding the degrading impact on citizens’ morale.

After a while, we saw Government develop its own distrust for the discontents, fuelling a nasty tit-for-tat that has caused President Ramotar endless sleepless nights, as he battled a national stage that worked against him taking the Guyanese nation forward.

President Ramotar has had to fight to overcome this national penchant for distrust, with one popular national commentator closely aligned to the Opposition even declaring himself an anarchist and a hater of elite ruling figures. Yet, the Opposition embraces this figure with a crushing embrace.

We must nurture a national culture of trust. We go about this difficult task with how we engage each other, how we reach out and embrace each other’s different viewpoints, how we tolerate each other’s uniqueness.

Trusting each other is the starting point for the emergence of Guyana as a solid 21st century society able to handle its internal political dysfunctions with humility, wisdom and practical sense.

In this task, President Ramotar’s unique leadership style and character lend itself well, and one could see the President playing a pivotal role in accomplishing this not only as Head-of-State, but even after his Presidency, as elder statesman.

The President has set that tone for the nurturing of a national culture of trust, and real healing has started across the nation. He’s already bringing divergent personalities together in the work of Government, and this skill of his could be a real dynamic as he creates a new playing field for the Guyanese body politic.

By Shaun Michael Samaroo