OUR land remains locked in some unnecessary pettiness, stifling our ability to cooperate in transforming how we live together. The average Opposition sympathiser riddles the Guyanese social space with a grotesque rowdiness, often becoming irrational, with eyes glazed over, lost to engagement or a workable conversation.Talk to the average Opposition-oriented person in this land, and the venom, hatred, and outright anger towards the ruling People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) jumps out with vicious force. It’s shocking to encounter. Maybe governments, by their very nature, tend to step on toes and offend sections of citizens, for, like the cliché asserts, you can’t please all the people all the time; but when an Opposition employs anger and irrationality to define itself in the national consciousness, we’ve got a real problem.
Opposition folks walk around with this stern-faced attitude, self-righteously propounding themselves as the paragon of virtue, morals and good sense.
Opposition Leader, Brigadier David Granger, faces a pressing challenge in cleaning up the act of his camp, in inculcating an attitude of rational, objective, unemotional engagement, in seeking to connect with folks not of Opposition persuasion in an atmosphere of understanding and mutual respect.
The Opposition plays a vital, crucially important, democratic role in Guyanese society, but this institution must learn how to play that role. Its function is not to break up the country, damage socio-economic programmes, oppose just for the sake of opposing, or bring down the free and fair Government of the land.
The Opposition’s role is to engage citizens and Government and the media to create a Guyanese society that stands tall, feeling ready and able to tackle the task of our rise as a 21st century nation in this global Knowledge Age.
Any objective look at the body politic of this country would show that it is Government alone that comes up with national solutions. Government created the blueprint for a new international airport, answering widespread criticism that went on for years in the society about Guyana’s small, village-style airport. Government heeded the call of citizens like Joseph O’Lall and scores of others globally who want us to develop a hydroelectric project, and got the Amaila Falls plans going. Government initiated the Marriott and the Berbice Bridge and the Providence development and the endless acres of residential housing development across the country.
Our Opposition failed to propose, design or build a single project or solution for us.
Brigadier Granger must address this constructive criticism with objective analysis. The Opposition’s got some sensible folks, and, despite Brigadier Granger’s role in the Guyana Defense Force during the dictatorship regime of the People’s National Congress (PNC), he seems a sensible, responsible leader today. But he’s got to take charge of the Opposition, seeing it as a national Institution rather than an antagonistic army ready to fight against Government, always in a stance of battle and generating strife and dissent rather than solutions and engagement.
We’re not claiming Government knows it all, or is perfect. Like President Donald Ramotar noted on a TV programme recently, Government welcomes ideas, initiatives, solutions and constructive engagement from Guyanese across the board. The days of PNC-style party paramountcy are long gone, cast into the dustbin of history. The PPP/C is open, and encourages a participatory, engaging relationship in the society.
Of course, there may be Government supporters and zealous activists who go overboard with their public comments and their aggressive tone towards those they see as opponents. This, too, we cannot condone, for we’ve got to cultivate a national atmosphere of humane understanding, mutual respect and selfless cooperation.
But that attitude of some folks, who damage Government’s image in the public mind, is not a modus operandi of either Government or the ruling Party. The Government and ruling Party seek a national tone of discussion that is calm, rational, sensible. However, this attitude of aggressive anger, irrational outbursts, baseless accusations, character assassination, and blatant lies, seems to be the way the Opposition does its thing, the very modus operandi of the APNU-AFC clique.
One would think that with rational minds like Nigel Hughes and Raphael Trotman and Richard Van West Charles in its ranks, along with the level-headed Brigadier Granger, we would see effective leadership for the Opposition to cultivate an image of a rational, sensible, solution-oriented national institution.
The Opposition, in our democracy, plays a vital role in our development. Along with the national media industry, it’s the Opposition that works with our freely and fairly elected Government to construct the Guyanese society of the future.
Come national and regional elections, the Opposition proceeds to take on Government’s record of managing and governing the society, and looks to citizens to make the choice of which Party would best fulfil the Guyana Dream.
This simple way of looking at its role, of realising how important it is to the people of this nation, would transform the scowling, stern-faced chagrin of the Opposition camp into a pleasant, engaging, cooperating national institution.
The average Guyanese citizen not of Opposition persuasion finds Opposition advocates hard to deal with, impossible to reason with, and in fact shuns the aggressive stance, choosing to walk away.
This sort of thing is uncalled for, for we’re a unique nation on the world stage. We’re one Guyanese nation, not split into camps opposing each other. We’ve already achieved the foundation of a modern society, in our democratic culture, firmed and established over the last two and a half decades. We’ve already pulled ourselves out of the devastating collapse foisted upon us during the PNC regime’s experimentation with the ideas of democracy and development. We’ve repaired the breaches of our socio-economic structure. We’ve advanced ourselves as a modern society in this 21st century global village. Our people now travel for vacation to the U.S. and the Caribbean, not migrating in droves anymore. We’ve achieved stunning transformation, in roads, schools, ability for each Guyanese to self-develop and progress.
A sane, sensible, rational, objective, professional Opposition camp would see and know all this, would not deny where we are today as a people, would not label Guyana a dictatorship, as such attitudes damage its own reputation and image because of the ridiculousness of such views.
With the demise of the Alliance For Change (AFC) since it gave up its independence to become a member of the political coalition of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), we’ve seen a toning down of its nasty rhetoric, with Khemraj Ramjattan and Moses Nagamootoo becoming increasingly less vocal and public. That accords some breathing space to the social space of this nation.
But, in proportion to the decrease of the AFC’s harshness, we see a rise of heated, emotive rhetoric from lower ranks of APNU. The top leadership’s got to tone down this over-zealous emotive way of engaging the Guyanese nation, and establish an engaging, sensible way of performing its role in the society.

by Shaun Michael Samaroo