Leaders have to be careful
Dear Editor,
I refer to the article captioned, “‘Reckless, provocative’ calls potential threats to social cohesion Granger” (SN March 10). Even as the President thoughtfully and rightfully speaks of the “fragile fabric” of this society, he is constrained by his office, the demands of protocols, and an ultra-sensitive environment. And I believe his personal standards and dignity. As a regular observing citizen, I can be more expressive, a shade more blunt.
Highly incitatory and deliberately divisive is how I would describe what was uttered in full public view and digested recently.
It rests heavily. There was first the premeditation and the predisposition to deliver the combustible to a receptive audience; and then the thoughtless abandon to instil burning anger, broadening anxieties, and burgeoning animosities in the already apprehensive. This is the apex of irresponsibility when practised by anyone; it is utterly unpardonable when originating with leaders, any leader.
Leaders have to be careful; they must be thoughtful and be responsive to the obligations of their positions, and never more so than in such a sensitive, easily roiled, easily wired place as Guyana, where matters can shortcircuit in the space of a heartbeat. Leaders must be fully aware (if they are not already well aware) of the reach and potency of words hurled without regard for the result. That is, unless that very result is desired and intended. For a long moment, there is returning to and pondering over that fateful phrase of the President’s “fragile fabric.” Indeed!
In a society always on tenterhooks, and held fast by easily separable strings, shaky institutions, and clashing histories, there is no place ‒ can be no place ‒ for any leader ready to gamble with the health, psyche, and fate of the people of this nation. In a sober, more well-grounded society, there would be no tolerance from any quarter for such palpable insanity. This hews to the very worst in man’s nature.
In view of what has occurred, I take the opportunity to remind writers, thinkers, opinion moulders, and thought-leaders that there is an obligation to exercise great prudence, even when there is the need and occasion to be sharp and penetrating. I do not spare myself in this appeal, for I too have failed in some regard. The urge to unsheathe and to uncoil comes too smoothly sometimes; many times the public result is jagged and rents. Then pen is more piecing than the sword, and especially so when it spills poisons and spreading social radioactivity. Just like the spoken word that spew from lips and hearts bent on the goals of cultivating bitterness and pervasive enmity.
Again and again, and way too often, old familiar pathways are trod with pressing intensity. There is no learning, only the brimming and overflowing, as is calculated. The winepresses of unsettled wrath are squeezed relentlessly and remorselessly to satiate the cravings of the already unhinged, dedicated to unhinging a future, a promise, a place, and hosts of people.
This is monstrous; it is destructive; it is immoral and should be found offensive by the decent ‒ unless there is none around. I believe that there are some.
Such behaviour is not worth any office. It is not worth another headlong rush for the exits of emigration. It is unthinking to set the stage for an inundation of the inimical that this patchwork nation can neither absorb, nor manage, nor weather. Let there be resistance to the sickness that some seek to spread.