Calls for Constitutional Reform
Dear Editor,
I have already commented on the futility and deceitful nature of this new call for Constitutional Reform.
Instead of just tinkering with the expressions that should be the constitution of reform, we should focus on dealing with the deeper issues that remain humbug.
In my earlier letter, I refer to the reunification of our educational system in order to produce morally raised men and women.
Sub-issue deals with elements of racism and prejudice, which still characterize our post-colonial racial polarizing society.
We ignore this to our peril.
The current Ethnic Relations Committee as in the case of its predecessor is unlikely to create the kind of harmony we all desire.
In Guyana, we have to be unforgiving to tackle all forms of racism whether subtle or obvious.
Secondly, to face ‘arrogant nouveau riche’ who feel they are now a ‘pon top.’
Guyana is not unique, but as it is a sparsely populated country, with no history of deep tribalism, we can learn from the unhappy events in places like Brazil and the recent conditions in the United States.
This latter is nothing more than the appearance of an aggressive white evangelical movement basking in the glory of slavery and Jim Crowism in the past.
In India, Muslims still claim injustice at the hands of a Hindu Prime Minister.
In Russia, I have spoken to young Russians, who are still accusing Mikhail Gorbachev of dismantling the Soviet Union, where white Russians reigned supreme.
The old wisdom that says when the big countries like the United States sneeze, we little ones can die of pneumonia.
Thanks to many Guyanese living in the US and the fact that every family unit in Guyana can identify some US resident relative; we in Guyana are very interested and influenced by events in the US.
Events in that country, since the turn of the 20th century, have influenced the attitudes and beliefs of the Guyanese majority.
Excerpt from an article in the Stabroek News of January 26, 2021 entitled ‘Liberation,’ ‘the last paragraph summarizes a situation that Guyanese at home and abroad should address.
He began thus, “In celebrating the liberation of Donald Trump, we must not forget that the Trump presidency has incorporated the raw politics of white supremacy in the United States. He often spoke as a separatist Southern governor of the 1960s, and, after losing the 2020 election, as a secessionist senator on the eve of the Civil War. To maintain the victory over Trump’s destructive politics, we must overcome the racism that brought him to power. That urgent challenge is facing not only the United States, but many multiracial societies around the world, ”and concluded“ And yet there is good news as well. Trump’s defeat, and the overwhelming public opprobrium in the United States that met Capitol rebels, holds the lesson that we can move beyond our worst instincts, fears, and trends. White racists in America lose their grip on power, and they know it. Times are really changing. The American people voted Trump out of power. The day before the rebellion, Georgia voters elected African-Americans and Jews as U.S. senators – both first to the state that came at the expense of two incumbents in favor of Trump.
Trump’s departure is therefore an opportunity for a fresh start, not only in deeply wounded US society, but in multi-ethnic divided societies everywhere. Nowhere is there any excuse to govern by racial hatred and ethnic chauvinism. In the post-Trump era, governments everywhere should expel those who hate hate.
The world should also look back in history to help us move forward. In 1948, in the shadow of the horrors of the Second World War, all the new UN member states adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This magnificent statement is based on the principle of universal human dignity, “without discrimination of any kind, such as race, color, gender, language, religion, political or other views, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status . ”
The Universal Declaration must be our home. His 75th birthday in 2023 is fast approaching, and we have a way of saying no to the haters, the demagogues, and the partisans. Trump left America in shambles, with 400,000 dead from COVID-19. Now that we have the Trump administration, we can take on the task of ending the pandemic and healing our deeply divided societies. ”
As someone who has lived through the early childhood privileges of World War II, more properly considered a major European civil war, the displacement, as a result of that conflict and worst of all, the stress and strain of that all-encompassing Cold War, the challenges of the oil crisis, the realignment of powerful militarism, the challenges of independence and the difficulty of making the Caribbean a single unit, I plead with our leaders from the major political parties to sit and talk as really civilized people should, before . venture out on the time-consuming and straightforward Constitutional Reform project.
At the end of the day, we’ve seen chaos, we’ve seen disappointment even when there were crafty expressions in a Constitution, all because of human foibles and publicity to subjugate the ‘other people.’
Let us go to brass tacks to save our country and to make our young people the main beneficiaries of God’s grace and bounty.
Instead of pursuing an existing Constitutional Reform, which will result in very little, I plead again for our leaders to sit down and have a civilized conversation recognizing that Guyana is today the product of a post-colonial racial polarizing society and the time has come for the goodness of sense to defeat and avoid loud-sounding rhetoric, and dealing with what the ancients would say are the ‘true facts.’
Let me make it perfectly clear to avoid being misunderstood that the hallmark and essential requirement of a modern state should be a written Constitution, which takes into account our history, circumstances and hopes and aspirations of the incoming generation.
Truly,
Hamilton Green