Hinds’ Sight: It is the government’s turn to trust the people--Dr. David Hinds

by dr. david hinds

The fallout from the salary increases for government ministers is instructive. The arguments and counter-arguments have been ventilated. The Minister of Governance asked the people to trust the government. The President finally weighed in and not unexpectedly sought to justify the hike. He, of course, did so in a less strident manner than some of his juniors. He tried to soften the blow; after all the bulk of the resistance came from his own supporters. That is the aspect of this matter that intrigues me the most. How can a leadership and a followership that seemed so in sync five months ago have such divergent views on a matter in such a short period of time? Worse, why is it that both sides so badly misread each other?

The answer, of course lies in the very nature of our politics and society. Ours is a post-plantation society in which the governed and the governors and potential governors have found common ground against things but never for things. Our history is full of that phenomenon. The working classes developed an alliance with the emerging privileged classes to fight against and defeat colonial rule. But as soon as independence was achieved, the privileged classes, which marched with the workers against colonialism begun beating and jailing these very workers in the name of national security and law and order.

It became clear very early on that the two groups had different expectations of independence. In the end the post-independence government, despite attempts at modifying the symbols of the plantation, could not overthrow the social and political relations of colonialism. Next year we will reflect on and some may celebrate 50 years of that independence.

The working classes then found new allies among a newer radical revolutionary leadership which presented itself as an alternative pole to the independence leadership. In Grenada, where they seized power, they soon turned their guns on the very masses in the name of revolutionary manners. This month we reflect on the 32nd anniversary of the demise of the Grenadian revolution that promised so much but in the end came up woefully short. In fact that revolutionary government ended up at the same place as the so-called reactionary government it displaced.

Here in Guyana, Walter Rodney and his WPA revolutionaries summoned the country to an unprecedented multi-ethnic mass revolution against the excesses of the independence government of the day. The causalities were many and the price was high; we still confront the ghosts of that period. But in the end, the post-dictatorship government eclipsed the dictatorship it replaced—by miles. Worse, the Indian Guyanese brethren who had joined their African Guyanese sisteren to fight the African Guyanese Goliath now stood mostly on the sidelines as the Indian Guyanese Goliath raped and pillaged like the old pirates that Bob Marley reminded us of. The more we change, rearrange, everything stays the same says the kaisonian-poet, David Rudder.

Enter this new government—a Coalition Government. Born in the bowels of mass frustration and a determination to yet again overcome, this Coalition is a unique historical formation. Its rise is both a rebuke of all that preceded it and a stamp of hope that we can be the noble civilization which has been denied us. Something stirred in this society starting at the 2011 polls that eventually burst open on May 11. Again, it was the working people, who Clive Thomas calls the “poor and the powerless” and the Rastafarians describe as the “sufferers” linking their hands with the privileged to lift Guyana to safer ground.

I know many of this privileged class who now sit in power. I have convinced myself that they would not turn the guns of the sate on the people. I know David Granger better than I know any of our past maximum leaders and I think he possesses an understanding of our history that would preclude him from repeating the sacrilege of our past leaders. For, it is in our history that the key to a higher politics lies. A couple of my close comrades of four decades share that seat of power; I have faith in their commitment to the creation of a dignified politics.

But I would be lying to readers and to myself, if I did not say that I worry. For all the breath of fresh air, it has brought to the country, the government has stumbled when it comes to feeling the heartbeat of the least in our midst. It is not enough to give workers a salary raise and to fix their roads and afford them water and electricity—that is what any and all governments are supposed to do. That this government does it better than the one before should be commended. But it has to do more than that because more is expected of it. This government is expected to lift the political culture, to be qualitatively better than those before.

Our government has to understand its specialness and the responsibility that comes with that specialness. Wrongly or rightly, they are the Joshuas of our time; they simply can’t be like the others. Our people have been betrayed too many times; they are “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Joe Harmon, one of political finds of our time, correctly told the discredited PPP that he has no apologies for the 50% raise. But Joe has to understand that the matter of government compensation is bigger than the PPP; it is at the heart of his constituency’s rage. So when he speaks on such a matter, he must know he is speaking to his supporters too or at least they hear him speaking to them too.

Minister Raphael Trotman’s plea for more trust is not what the doctor orders. The bank account of trust is overdrawn. It is the government’s turn to trust the people. And the way you trust the people is by grounding with them, relating to and seeking to correct their history of government denial, consulting them and embracing them not as an abstraction, but as living flesh and blood whose right to be is given due value. I think I hear the voice of the people saying “you are mistaken, you are wrong, we don’t like it and we don’t want it.” Can’t we the leaders trust that voice? In the words of the poet, the government must hear with ears of the people and speak with the voice of the people.

More of Dr. Hinds' writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com