By Shaun Michael Samaroo
CANADA’S Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Donald Ramotar share some common traits: They both sing with real talent in public; they both became Head of State with a Minority Government; and they both prorogued Parliament in the face of criticism of anti-democratic behaviour.

Harper came out to win a majority at elections, and governed Canada to stand as the premiere economy in the lauded Group of Eight.
Both Harper and Ramotar battled to prevent their nations falling into political decay, and to restore political order, with strong leadership despite severe criticisms.
Francis Fukuyama, the great American political thinker, wrote a ground-breaking two-volume book exploring the history of liberal democracy, particularly pronouncing on political order and political decay.
Guyanese approach 2015 with this choice staring us in the face, demanding we tackle our socio-political dysfunction, or face another year of impasse, unworkability, crass scapegoating, and lack of consensus, cooperation and conciliatory conversation.
Were we to introspect what’s not working for us as a nation, what’s keeping us stifled and bedraggled and beggarly for five decades; were we to, with authenticity and integrity, really look into our hearts, we would feel the pulse of what’s decaying us.

POLITICAL CULTURE
The Guyanese society suffers from its political culture. Since the 1950s-with Forbes Burnham and Dr Cheddi Jagan unable to reconcile their differences, instead opting to split and divide into two camps, each gravitating to an ethnic base – we’ve suffered as a nation.
It’s astounding, though, that the political culture never eroded the personal relationship amongst us. Among the nations of the world, Guyana stands tall as a symbol and role model for multicultural tolerance, religious freedom, ethnic relations and peaceful co-existence among its citizens.
Yet, we face 2015 with that political debacle hanging with menacing fierceness over our nation.
Why?
We’re in a three-decade process of the Guyanese democracy maturing, growing up. Democracy takes time. In fact, Fukuyama saw it fit to detail his thoughts on the progress and development, and possible decay, of liberal democracy, in two monumental volumes, each 600+ pages: Ideal democracy is not easy, and does not happen overnight. Even today, great democracies like India and the United States face serious structural problems, and in Britain, democracy-sowed freedom now stands threatened with an Orwellian-type surveillance society.
We lack the kind of sanity and sense a Fukuyama could bring to our national conversation; to the exploring of who we are, and why we’re where we are today. Public commentators across Guyana lack the rational clear-sighted insight to contribute anything of significance to the national consciousness.
The influential national newspapers, including the Guyana Chronicle, but especially the Stabroek News and Kaieteur News, lack serious insight into the society’s body politic, and more and more engage in petty, crass, biased, prejudiced and incompetent reporting and editorialising. In fact, the average citizen ignores the newspapers, except to devour gossip and gore.
So the national media fail the citizen.

DEMOCRACY DEFINED
Democracy comprises a three-pillar national structure: A professional media, where press freedom means cultivating responsible, balanced and ethical national conversations; a freely and fairly elected Government, comprising State institutions efficiently serving citizens; and a National Assembly to represent constituencies around the country, where Members of Parliament seek not their own power and aggrandizement, but the welfare of their community members.
Given the nature of our current Constitution, as Minister of Legal Affairs and Attorney-General Anil Nandlall asserts, we’ve got to work within certain frameworks, such as President Donald Ramotar being Executive President, with hands-on management of the society.
Yet, President Ramotar takes a very hands-off approach to Government. He largely ignores his vast presidential powers; he allows ministers, managers and state employees to use their initiative; to come up with and implement solutions, and to work unimpeded. He is re-defining how the Guyana Government works, within that framework that endows him with so much power. His humility and humble heart of service is his most endearing quality, and it defines his Presidency. These things the Guyanese nation is not matured enough to analyze; we lack insight into such things as character, leadership integrity and human nature. Instead, we focus on vague abstractions to scapegoat and blame and refuse to take personal responsibility for the state of our nation.
Of course, critics say he’s too laid back and passive. This is the society we cultivated over the five decades of our Independence; we’re all critics, seeing nefarious shadows and suspicious intentions in everything. We’re a nation of complainers.
Apart from a few level-headed public commentators, the Guyanese national platform lacks any conversation that inspires, motivates, seeks understanding and goodwill, or embarks on bridge-building.
We dream big, and express good intentions, but we always fall back into our default way of being, complaining, criticizing, cussing, crass and irrational and base and ignoble.

A PARTNERSHIP FOR NATIONAL UNITY

Let’s take the political alliance, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), for example. The initiative started with a gaff between friends, but, motivated and visionary, Everall Franklin, late leader of the Guyana Action Party, took up the idea. He approached several outstanding, respected Guyanese to head up a political alliance of all the political parties; a kind of national-front effort.
His hard work and dogged determination paid off with APNU, a partnership that brought together bitter foes, namely the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and the People’s National Congress (PNC), along with smaller outfits, including Franklin’s party, which, in fact, was rooted in the Rupununni, among the families that revolted against the PNC in the 1960s. Franklin, who had spent time in England, and counted several high-profile national figures as friends, took over the Action Party leadership from Paul Hardy, a descendant of a respected Rupununni family.
These strange bedfellows came together and forged APNU, mirroring the move in Trinidad and Tobago of Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her visionary People’s Partnership. APNU’s leader, Brigadier David Granger, a bright historian and accomplished military officer, brought a new look to the Guyanese political scene.
But the success that Persad-Bissessar achieved eludes APNU. In fact, the Partnership has become a bitter battle ground, with in-fighting, disagreements and leadership struggles erasing its noble intent so inherent in its name.
Rumour has it that one of its political partners, the slow-witted Justice For All Party founded by controversial TV personality, C. N. Sharma, who became embroiled in allegations of pedophile crimes, up and quit APNU after its Member of Parliament, Sharma’s son, got vexed with the APNU leadership.
Lindeners revolted against Granger’s leadership; PNC strongman Carl Greenidge challenged Granger at the Party congress; and the WPA retreated into stony-faced embarrassment after testimonies at the Walter Rodney Commission exposed the draconian PNC harassment of WPA leaders during the time that Dr Walter Rodney was assassinated in Georgetown. To compound its problems, an APNU Member of Parliament got into trouble in the United States for terrorism activities.
So APNU promised a new political dimension, involving no less than the PNC, which had crippled Guyana’s socio-economic structure over a 28-year reign that stifled all democratic functions of the society. But it has failed to live up to that promise.
Today, as its name implies, it should be seeking partnership for development. This involves a genuine effort to cultivate consensus, cooperation, civil national conversations and conciliatory understanding. If APNU is really serious about transforming the Guyanese political landscape, it must live up to the promise inherent in its name. Franklin’s vision seems to have died when he passed away, and today APNU is nothing but a shell depending on its core base to gain political power.
But it knows it cannot win national elections purely on ethnic support; so it has started engaging the even more disappointing Alliance For Change (AFC).

ALLIANCE FOR CHANGE
If any national Guyanese political outfit promised much and delivered stunning disappointment, it’s the AFC.
Co-founders Raphael Trotman and Khemraj Ramjattan came together in a vision of healing and bridge-building, with strong support from the Diplomatic Corps, professional citizens and independent analysts. The AFC promised to re-build the Burnham-Jagan 1950s divide.
Trotman acted with noble intent, walking away from the PNC after that Party refused to apologise for destroying the socio-economic structure of Guyana over its 28 years of rigged-elections rule. Ramjattan walked away from the PPP, demanding a dismantling of the Party’s inner centralism.
They joined hands and formed the AFC, and won big at the 2006 elections, replacing the WPA and United Force as political forces to reckon with, and ushering in a new promise of a new dispensation. But like APNU, it failed. The AFC has absolutely given up on looking for national consensus, conciliation, cooperation and understanding. It has settled into a very limiting oppositional role.
After the bitter Parliamentary feud over the last National Budget, Trotman sought to make a difference, to re-ignite the AFC’s founding vision. He called up President **Ramotar and Ramjattan, and met with them at an informal setting, and raised the possibility of cooperation, consensus and mutual understanding to move the country forward, to ensure consensual development.
Ramjattan today refers to the meeting as “the grey goose summit,” brushing it aside. In fact, the leaders had come up with a verbal agreement to work together, to advance, to move the country in the right direction.
But, after the meeting, APNU got wind of the meeting, and became upset, accusing the AFC of selling out the cause of the Opposition, such cause being just to oppose Government, a view that top leaders of the AFC came to hold dear to their heart, and now practice. The AFC has lost its way.
Trotman took a backseat in the Party, and focused on his Speakership, trying his best to conduct the business of Parliament with impartial and rational sense. He got back somewhat into the fold after facing controversy, but the AFC lost that Trotman touch, and despite Ramjattan’s noble intentions, the AFC today has fallen into myopic pettiness. It lacks the integrity of fostering a new national conversation, of engineering a new social dynamic, or engaging with Government and APNU to bring a new paradigm to the national table.
In fact, the Party’s leadership took a serious blow when a rift widened between Trotman and Ramjattan, and two camps developed internally, ironically mirroring the very situation Trotman and Ramjattan wanted to heal back in 2006.
Today, the AFC harbours discontents, crass critics without a real agenda, and hangers-on who seem determined to dismantle and destruct, rather than build and construct. Its leadership seems without vision or direction.
Its focus on good governance and corruption and accountability lacks depth. The AFC dances a directionless waltz with the private newspapers, each feeding off the other for relevance to the citizen.
Both the Government and the ruling PPP/C admit there’s corruption in the State system. Corruption is a five-decade old problem. Lack of accountability is a five-decade old problem: ask the Auditor General. Government and the PPP know this. The AFC and APNU want widespread corruption among police officers to stop, but chops the national Budget for Amerindian development and tuition fees to the University of Guyana. This irrational behaviour baffles any right-thinking person.
Not once has the AFC or APNU produced a single article to showcase the progress Guyanese have made in the past two decades. Yes, there are major setbacks in development, but Guyanese today live way easier lives than even a decade ago. The AFC leadership engages a national newspaper with deep roots in the underworld, being hypocritical in who they criticise for moral, ethical behaviour.
Squandering their majority in Parliament, neither APNU nor the AFC came up with any defining national solution, but instead adopted a stance of opposition, criticism and scapegoating, becoming petty, crass and non-working. It’s a lazy, irresponsible and silly way to see oneself and one’s role in the history of this nation. Even Peter D’Aguair’s United Force (UF) and the WPA played a defining role in this country. The AFC is yet to find its footing to make the difference it says it exists to make. It must learn to lead with courage and strength, and not allow just anyone to speak on its behalf. It must adopt principles, policies and practices that define its integrity and intent, instead of allowing its name to be associated with crass characters lacking even basic conciliatory skills.
Across the Guyanese society, the political culture defines us, shapes how the citizen lives, informs on how we develop ourselves.
One would think a Majority Opposition Parliament would have delivered telling solutions to pressing community problems. Instead we saw major fallout in the AFC, with many overseas activists migrating to APNU, or quitting the national stage. Several scandals have hit party leaders. It deals with these with self-righteous indignation.
In its self-righteousness, it failed to deliver solutions. It failed to build bridges. It failed to transform the national conversation. It failed to cultivate cooperation, consensus and conciliation.
Instead, it resorts to the blame game, something that has defined the Parliament, to the chagrin and frustration of Guyanese around the world.
In all this, the nation ignores the man who is its President. President Ramotar and the Government got into power because they won free and fair national elections. Whatever the challenges, difficulties, shortcomings, inefficiencies and internal issues that face Guyana and its Government, it’s our moral duty to work with a freely and fairly elected Government to develop this society.
President Ramotar, and in fact most ministers, would easily admit that several handicaps and shortcomings bedevil the society. Governance is not an easy thing in this society. The national skills crisis, widespread illiteracy, affecting especially the Public Service, the migratory brain drain, all these add up to make governing this society a task with monumental challenges.
These same problems in fact affect APNU, AFC and every organization in this country. It is, therefore, a moral imperative that AFC and APNU, being Parliamentary parties, engage the Government, seeing that our nation is approaching our 50th Independence Anniversary.
The defining political leaders of our time – Trotman, Ramjattan, Nagamootoo, Ramotar, Rohee, Texeira, Luncheon, Granger, Greenidge, et al – these must learn to sit around a table and talk, engage each other in goodwill and good sense.
The Opposition leaders must ditch their arrogance, and see that Government, as freely and fairly elected, holds the Chairmanship of the nation. Government sits at the head table. Government sets the agenda.
Everyone knows how humble and easy-going President Ramotar is: it’s his character, the nature of the man. He might not be totally in charge at Freedom House or even at Cabinet, but he is the President today, and his simplicity, humility and easy engagement are qualities that are especially suited to this time.
The future of the Guyanese nation lies in the hands of these few leaders. The nation watches, wanting each one to inspire us, motive us, become our role models, show us how we could cultivate harmony and peace and goodwill.
In the hands and hearts of these leaders lies the destiny of the Guyanese body politic: are we going to see political progress in 2015, or political decay?
As we see emerging from the Rodney Commission, political decay leads to economic and social destruction, and even assassination of our noble sons and daughters. Our history warns us not to allow our nation to fall into political decay. We must seek cooperation, conciliation and empathy. These lead to political order. We’ve got to shun the chaos of divisive, scapegoating rhetoric.
Let’s cultivate a new season in our nation, with humility, a heart of service, mutual understanding, cooperation and goodwill.