THE warning to “Beware the Ides of March” in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, foretold by a soothsayer during the Feast of Lupercal, of impending tragedy impelled by trickery and manipulating of circumstances to achieve a desired outcome, which was the assassination of Julius Caesar on 15th March, is being replicated in the Guyana scenario, where public officials supportive of Government are time and again drawn into self-defeating controversies, which are obvious ploys to defame the said officials and denigrate the Government.
During the Feast of Lupercal, Caesar was passing by when he was accosted and warned by the soothsayer; but Caesar treated this unsolicited warning with amused skepticism and advised his companions to ignore the fortune teller and his dire prognostications.
On the 15th March, passing the soothsayer with his entourage on the way to the capitol, Caesar remarked with amused tolerance that “… the ides of March are come”, but the seer replied “aye, but not yet gone”.
The oracle that the clairvoyant had prophesied foretold a conspiracy by Senators, including Caesar’s trusted friends, to create and manipulate circumstances that would elicit responses from Caesar on which to premise a situational and seemingly logical reason for his assassination.
During the Tenth Parliament, former PPP/C insiders, now vehemently opposed to the governing partnership, while pursuing the removal of Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee with vengeance, even creating false scenarios whereby the Minister was accused of precipitating tragic incidents during the Linden uprising, had threatened the ministers in Parliament: “We will take you out one by one”. They used the contrived Clement Rohee imbroglio to precipitate a “no-confidence” motion designed to remove the PPP/C from Government with immediate effect.
Police Commissioner Henry Greene had fallen victim to this strategy. After he had allowed himself to be inveigled into a situation that eventuated into public scorn, ridicule, relentless and vindictive attacks by anti-Government adversaries until he suffered a heart attack from consequential stress, enforced resignation, he finally paid the ultimate price from stress-related death.
Embattled doctor, Bheri Ramsaran, has been long in the political fray and is aware of these ploys to “… take you down one by one”, yet he allowed himself to be provoked by a known character into reacting to a manipulated situation that eventuated into the desired outcome. Mission accomplished: The Minister was dismissed, and he became another statistic in the exquisitely crafted strategy to demonise and destroy Government officials by persons with vested interests, with the hoped-for result of eventually leveraging the PPP/C Government out of the administrative construct of Guyana.
The Government has rightfully dismissed Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, because public officials have to maintain high standards and hold themselves above the fray; but they are nevertheless human and susceptible, as Dr. Ramsaran proved himself to be, to human frailties such as anger and other human emotions and actions.
Betrayal by those we once held to our bosom as friends is as old as the hills and, like Caesar’s killers who ended up accidentally inflicting injuries on themselves through the vicious and vindictive nature of their attack, with his closest friend and most trusted Senator, Brutus, receiving a cut on his hand, it is the once-trusted friends and intimates of Government officials who are inflicting the death blows on former comrades; but are unaware of the fact that they are simultaneously injuring themselves in the process.
Caesar’s last words as he was dealt the final stab by Brutus, “Et, tu, Brute?’ before finally succumbing.
It is therefore imperative that public officials recognise that, especially during this elections season they are, in effect, existing in a ‘fish-bowl’, so to speak, and to “…beware of the ides of May!”