For peaceful elections

In the past few days, there have been disturbing signs that the elections fever may be heating up to a pitch that may cause our fragile democratic peace to be challenged. We refer specifically to the defacement of posters of the PPP/C, in which its presidential candidate, Donald Ramotar, was literally “defaced”. We refer also to the disruption of a meeting of the PPP/C on the East Coast Demerara by members of an opposition party who were egged on by an executive member of that party.

We have no wish to enter the realms of psychology to point out the possible dark impulses behind the urge to “wipe out” a person symbolically, and how that may proceed into the world of the real. But we have, from our own history, enough instances of thugs being deployed to disrupt political meetings. These instances should give pause to those who would wish to repeat those shameful episodes in the present.

We remind them of men being maimed, beaten and even killed when some meetings were broken up by the PNC during the heyday of its dictatorship. As Martin Carter said in another context: “Were some who ran one way/ were some who ran another way/ were some who did not run at all/ were some who will not run again.”

And we remember Burnham mocking one now-martyred political leader as a “champion high jumper” after he was forced to scale a fence as he ran for his life.

But what makes the present agitation surreal is that some of those who survived their fallen comrade – and even fled through canefields to escape their own bones being broken in the wake of a busted meeting – have now made common cause with their old nemeses. And this is what makes the present agitation in the streets potentially incendiary. The institutional memory of the past depredations against political opponents has been passed on to this new motley crew of agitators, which includes individuals who have for years called for “revolution” of one colour or another.

Others have invoked images of “genocide” in an effort to stir opponents of the government into extreme action.

And this is why we fear that the open provocations of defaced posters and disruption of meetings may careen out of control. The groundwork for disproportionate responses has been laid. The present agitation over the closure of CNS Channel Six is casus belli, not the causa belli – the occasion for the war, not the cause of the war.

CNS Channel Six is no babe in the woods when it comes to making inflammatory statements that run afoul with the law. It practically incarnates the circumstances that gave rise to the formation of the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting (ACB) back in 2002 during “dialogue” between President Jagdeo and Desmond Hoyte.

The present suspension is the fourth for the channel since then. While at least one other channel was also sanctioned, the latter appeared to have imbibed the rationale for the institution and its regime. Not so CNS Channel Six. Its latest transgression purportedly went straight to the jugular on a most sensitive area in Guyana for peace and harmony – incitement of religious discord.

As we enter the homestretch on the present elections trail, we call on more reasoned and saner heads to prevail. Through dint of hard work, sagacious leadership and international goodwill, Guyana has begun to pull itself out of the abyss in which it had been plunged for decades.

We are showing a positive growth in our GDP while our erstwhile richer neighbours are headed in the opposite direction.

Political stability is paramount if we are to continue on a positive growth trajectory.

We must all work to ensure that the free and fair elections that we will be enjoying for the fourth time since 1992 will also be peaceful.