Guyanese of good conscience, fair-mindedness and reasonable hearts reach out to President Donald Ramotar for two main reasons. First, the Opposition’s cutting short of his fairly and freely elected Government to a mere three years of its five-year term smacks of a grotesque dictatorial tendency, and this stifling of our democracy we cannot condone. Second, President Ramotar succeeded in transforming our society’s way of being.We want to see this man, who redefined the Presidency as an office of humble service rather than a throne of authority and power, able and empowered to serve a full five-year term, because he deserves it. When he became President, he was relatively unknown, and detractors questioned every decision he made, and knocked his leadership style. But he’s proven his mettle, and won the hearts of the Guyanese people.

Presidents come in different styles, their character and personality defining the society they lead. And we’ve got to raise the standard of our public discourse to where we discuss these things, where we analyse the humanity of the leaders we see rise to govern our society.
From this viewpoint, from the perspective of a high view, above the fray and the rabble and the noise, we could see a crucial difference President Ramotar made in his three years as President: he redefined our way of being, how we think and behave as a people.
Such things as re-defining our consciousness, of shaping the national mindset, of designing the social space of the land, we take for granted, because such intangibles lie below the surface, more a soulish way of being than a physical manifestation.
As we look at the two main Presidential candidates, what ought to define our vote come May 11 more than anything else is the leadership style and depth of character of these gentlemen.
In Brigadier David Granger, the leader of the Opposition front, A Partnership for National Unity-Alliance For Change (APNU-AFC), we’ve got a history scholar, a decorated military officer, and a leader who had to battle serious challenges within the People’s National Congress (PNC) and APNU to rise to his position.
From all appearances, Brigadier Granger is a decent, respectable human being, quiet, not prone to rowdiness or quarrelsome irrationality.
But Brigadier Granger lapses in two crucial national necessities: he refuses to publicly apologise for the socio-economic devastation that the PNC caused the Guyanese nation over its 28 years of Government of this country. As leader of the PNC and APNU, this coalition of political fronts, he owes it to Guyanese to perform the PNC’s mea culpa, to confess to the national sins of the PNC, to pledge that never again would Guyana suffer such shame and disgrace and paranoid experimentation with the concepts of democracy and development.
Brigadier Granger also lapses in his approach to the Presidential Rodney Commission that President Ramotar initiated to probe the suspected political assassination of our foremost global historian and scholar, Dr. Walter Rodney.
While President Ramotar displays the immense courage and steely character necessary to probe such a vital international cold case, this stain on the conscience of the Guyanese nation, while the President chose to face down the vociferous detractors and vocal enemies of national justice in this case, Brigadier Granger flatly refused to cooperate with the Commission, and even touts the termination of the Commission’s work as a main goal of his.
So while President Ramotar stands up for national social justice, Brigadier Granger refuses to display the good conscience and determination and courage necessary to bring the PNC out of the dark era of its rigid rigged-elections rule.
In other words, Brigadier Granger keeps the PNC in a dark age of conscientious leadership.
We want him, as leader of the PNC, to step up his courage, his good conscience, his sense of justice and fair play. We want him to acknowledge that it is under the PNC that a wide swath of this country, despite being loyal constituents of the PNC, suffered immense socio-economic damage, which Government is still working to repair and restore.
Linden, Albouystown, New Amsterdam, Tiger Bay, Dartmouth in Essequibo, these places today stand as stark symbols of the PNC’s impact on its own voting bloc. The PNC damaged the socio-economic development of Guyanese who continue to support it. The least Brigadier Granger could do is take to a national platform and perform a heartfelt mea culpa, apologising for the socio-economic devastation of our nation under PNC rule.
We’re now a fully developed democracy, and as we see with President Ramotar’s Government, we encourage freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom to deal with the past, to introspect deep into our soul and look into our national psyche to perform necessary psychotherapy on our body politic.
Brigadier Granger would know all this, would feel all this in his heart, would encompass a sense of what’s necessary. But does he possess the courage, will and determination to face the PNC’s past and deal with it?
We see leaders like Khemraj Ramjattan, Moses Nagamootoo, Christopher Ram, Dr. Rupert Roopnarine, Joey Jagan, Nigel Hughes, James Bond, Basil Williams, partner with Granger in their quest to design the future of the Guyanese nation. These leaders either, astonishingly, remain blissfully unaware of such national necessities as the PNC dealing with its past in a public mea culpa, or, in a demonstration of the poorest of leadership character, ignore such thoughts nagging their conscience.
Human society revolves around time: the past, the present, the future. We look to write and design the future, to create the possibilities we envision, to construct and build our aspirations and potential into reality. To perform powerfully in this human endeavour, we’ve got to exercise wisdom, good conscience, authentic conversation and strength, courage and resolve, now, today, to face our past and deal with it.
One would think a military-minded historian of the admirable accomplishment of Brigadier Granger would know this, deep in his intuition, and as a military officer would exercise the courage and leadership strength to perform such a cleansing of our national soul, of the PNC’s past.
Until such time, we could rest assured that our nation found President Ramotar, and we’re seeing that his leadership style, his re-defining of our national way of being, works for us in this hour of our development as a people. In him, our nation sees a humble, serving President with deep belief in national social justice, working democracy, and citizen participation and engagement, and a deep desire to build the future while leading with humility today in exorcising the demons of the past, a leader who intuitively understands how to design our body politic.
By Shaun Michael Samaroo