With just under six months in office, the new government seemed to be retreating into a poisonous bubble, into a cocoon of malice, pettiness and spite.
It should pull back, and move forward!
At the risk of focusing again on American politics, I just want to point out that when asked about his position on speeding up the impeachment hearing for the former president, President Biden politely bounced the question off.
Firmly planting his administration’s priorities, he responded that he needs as much time as possible to address national emergencies such as the Covid-19 pandemic (that has already claimed 414,000 American lives) by getting a million vaccines daily into arms, and to secure bipartisan support for his nearly two-trillion-dollar relief and stimulus programme.
Learn and Lead
Reading between the lines, I suspect that for President Biden the hearing into the articles of impeachment ought to take a back seat, for now; even as it appears daunting to secure 17 votes from Republicans in the Senate for the required two-thirds majority to convict Trump.
In my last column I wrote that we should “look and learn”. Now I believe that we should learn and lead.
On the foreign policy front, now that the Trump outfit has been dislodged from the White House saddle, Guyana does not have to follow the reactionary wolf-pack that traded rigged elections for mindless and subservient tutelage. With Pompeo put in his ignoble place and slapped with sanctions by China, Guyana should not feel bullied to make sellout concessions to his once honeyed-tongue diplomats, his party’s investor-donor class, their lobbyists and so-called advisors.
Political and Witch-Hunting
At home, we should pull back from the frenzied and debilitating campaign of political witch-hunt, or tit-for-tats. Instead, the administration should explore every opportunity that could help our nation to heal, and to move forward with some semblance of unity.
I watched a re-play of an interview with President Biden, when he was asked by Chinese President Xi Jinping to describe America. In one word, he answered, “opportunities”.
This administration ought to know that there is after every fresh elections a very narrow window of opportunities to deliver manifesto promises. Sooner, like a meandering cyclone, would come disaffection and resentment that would uproot the crop of goodwill.
Unfortunately, there are underlings who are instead lost in a delusional interlude that the prosecution of petty politics would take us to the higher plane of opportunities about which Biden spoke, to reunite and build our country.
In the past we fussed about things such as stolen law books. Now, we are busy burrowing into a proverbial gold mine for wrist bands and chains, apparently looking for the Lost City of El Dorado.
Bloody Knife
In past days I looked on in utter disbelief and shame at how these self-righteous hunters of the Lost Ark of Noah tried to dig up the noble remains of former Ambassador and exemplary patriot, Dr. Odeen Ishmael, to recoup literally a handful of coins that ought to have been written off several years ago due to bureaucratic bungling under a previous PPP government.
The would-be assassins of Ishmael’s integrity still wield the bloody knife that had been plunged into the body of others who were not allowed to defend themselves in what has become a wholesale purge of some 1,000 persons from government jobs.
Upon his death on January 5, 2019, I recalled how over 50 years ago, Odeen and I “survived the Stalinist purge only to become victims of it after”. Now, like the satraps about whom Pablo Neruda spoke after the coup in Chile, I again see this ghoulish craving for revenge by a gang that is impervious to hurting the feelings of others and their loved ones.
But I would not include in that pack the “old guards”, once the “comrades” of the late Ambassador, who served selflessly as our country’s top envoy for 21 years. They too need to take a stand against vendetta politics, if only to show that they have not lost both their say and significance.
(The author is a journalist, attorney, former Prime Minister of Guyana and First Vice-President).
