Excruciating movement on the way forward
the first movement in what is already an exquisitely tuned and timed work of political choreography. I say this because there was the lush orchestration of “zone of convergence” in that both sides have maintained their existing positions (SN and KN, August 10). As an interrogator of, and experimenter with, the language, I certainly do appreciate “zone of convergence” and took careful note of the qualifier attached: maintenance of existing positions. Those are nonstarters, and everybody knows so. My interpretation is: listened to, but not heard; and reciprocal agreement that is where you are. Chinese water torture in medieval chambers it is.
Nobody is conceding anything yet and hedging bets publicly. The best option is to wait on the Chief Justice (ag). Wait on GECOM, as led, if not powered, by its new chairwoman. I did say before that women are the keepers of this Guyanese kingdom and running this country. And after that eternity of five days waiting (to see who comes out ahead and how, through what), then leaders will have their own announcement to a waiting Guyanese electorate as to more movement on the way forward. Excruciating it has been, and it will continue to be. As an aside, I see both learned ladies offering a range in which to graze; imitations of the CCJ: fix it politically. Specify it, at the leadership level.
And that realisation is why there is movement by centimeters. Make no mistake (remember what I said: choreography), leaders know the end game, where all roads must lead, no matter how slowly, how torturously, how stubbornly. No one man, no single
political group, no solitary racial segment is coming out of this pure and like before. Not a single one can be left behind.
To the skeptics, I say: out of the blue (well, not quite), there was that meeting; just like the chairwoman’s consensus appointment. I stand by again, what is my oft-repeated position, the winds of understanding come. Slowly. Almost stealthily. But they come in quiet creep, one bended knee at a time. Just like a toddler groping to find the way forward in a strange, new world. Lots of ground to cover; many options, previously not considered, to be followed and peered into to determine where they will carry.
Political Guyana will persist in being a troubled pathway, until the last one is taken without public kicking and screaming. All Guyana should expect more smiles, more warmth; and, as artificial as they may be, there will be a different kind of continuity. How can it be any other way?
As a Sunday offering to my fellow Guyanese, I share an extract (many to follow later) from a huge tome I am reading on Exxon. It says, “Exxon’s strategy…the weight of the corporation’s investments and the cash flow it shared with local governments overwhelmed the economy and became the central prize in violent local contests for power.” That was “in impoverished African countries.” Is that not Guyana, too, with its economic impoverishment and (not yet violent) local contests for power?
We have been pitted against one another in very tight, taut, and tense confines. Against each other. It is why I insist that the “zone of convergence” (I really do like that one) has to be movement to some common front, if united in name only. I sense something.
Yours faithfully, GHK Lall