‘I no longer have to be as vocal in social and mainstream media’

Dear Editor, Permit me to address your editorial ‘Youth and politics’ first from the perspective of its primary fallacy, the almost caricaturist representation of Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan as a lone heroic figure who “steadfastly tries to break the glass ceiling that seems to be affecting young politicians.”

Firstly, the trouble with Mr Duncan as supposedly emblematic of some new wave of youth leadership is that what we may well have a Clinton Urling redux, an ambitious, young, ‘safe’ candidate whose ascendancy is premised not on organic engagement and a broad philosophical vision but a carefully cultivated singleissue ‘maverick’ image given extra currency by a notoriously conservative social establishment seeking political influence but without wanting to get its own hands dirty. Basically a middling Manchurian candidate for the middle class.

Compounding this of course is his placement within the concentric circles of the established power, an AFC member (of fairly recent vintage) and an APNU+AFC local government candidate. The recurring problem with the sort of political ‘analysis’ that the editorial engages in is that it deliberately plays into the farce that this is some epic struggle between young and old at the city council, as opposed to unfortunate passive-aggressive hegemonic gamesmanship between the two partners/factions of the governing coalition. There is no position that Mr Duncan takes that is not at least implicitly given a green light by the leadership in the AFC, and the same can be said respectively about Ms Chase-Green and APNU. There is no more self-generated agency in Mr Duncan in 2016 than there was in Mr Jagdeo in 1996, merely quiet anointment by established interests playing political chess.

The editorial, ironically, places a premium on mainstream media in contradistinction to social media as a conduit for youth views of ‘substance’, and points out my own supposed silence even on the latter. The editorial writer is either not on social media or doesn’t visit my Facebook page. On an almost daily basis I engage in commentary and discussions on a variety of issues, including voicing clear criticism of government initiatives I disagree with (and to its credit, I’m still employed by the administration) and even that represents a fraction of what takes place daily.

It should be considered that the editorial was posted to my wall by my friend Kwesi Greenidge with whom I’ve carried out in-depth, public domain social media conversations on a sweeping range of topics from transitional justice to the socioeconomic implications of the fledgling oil industry. Within less than a day of my suggesting that the government should have created an app to automatically calculate income tax under the new structure, a UWI Jamaica based economist friend created and posted an online spreadsheet document doing just that, and it was further refined by a UG lecturer as an actual app mere hours later. That is the sort of dynamic (solutions-based) engagement that is intrinsically impossible in mainstream media.

My letters to the editor were the best tool I had to influence policy makers on cultural policy and governance, because not only had the former Minister of Culture proven himself hostile to scrutiny or accountability but also because the mainstream media normalized the status quo by failing to investigate him thoroughly when there were clear red flags. As a young person engaging in informed, substantial analysis of an area of government and governance, I rarely saw those issues breaking through the paper wall of the letter pages.

My job today means I no longer have to be as vocal in social and mainstream media because I been have tasked with fixing what I formerly complained about. It isn’t my job to criticize my job, it is the opposition’s – their silence should be instructive.

While I commend the general thrust of SN’s editorial, I can point to similar sentiments expressed by yours truly since June of last year, shortly after being employed by government:

“There is… a fecklessness when it comes to the incorporation of the young into both the body politic as well as the machinery of government administration that does not bode well for the longevity of the Granger government... Five years is a short time in the life of a political administration, but a long time for the young and hungry to gather their resources and mount a challenge to the status quo – come 2020, an aging political leadership may well find that this is no longer a country for old men.”

That assessment was published not in the mainstream media, but the Guyana Mosquito blog and social media. It still stands, as well as my assertion in the article that the current coalition, despite its mistakes, remains the far better alternative for this country.

Either way, the necessary emerging, sustainable youth leadership that Guyana needs will not be established by photo ops, and single-dimension postures, and a knighting by the status quo whether political or social, but by credible, competent young people showing true agency and challenging not simply existing political structures but socio-cultural ones as well, including the presumed ‘superiority’ of the mainstream media. That is something

already taking place, however currently amorphous, and the best-case scenario for this country to progress is for the political administration to recognize and engage in dialogue with it or face, in the aftermath of the inevitable conflict, the danger of Guyana’s own version of the Trumpian movement, the second ascendancy of Bharrat Jagdeo.

In closing, then as now, I still have a great deal of substance to say on the role of culture and cultural policy in sustainable development in Guyana. My challenge to Stabroek News is to finally update its anachronistic and arguably patrician editorial outlook to accommodate the breadth of dialogue on this and other issues that have long been taking place on social media. Yours faithfully, Ruel Johnson