The opposition has now reconfirmed the people’s cynicism about politics

Honesty and Politics: Honesty, we know, is not a cloistered moral virtue, demanding strict adherence at all times. Compassion, diplomacy, and life-threatening circumstances sometimes require a departure from the pure, unadulterated truth. Some vocations, like politics, however, seem to encourage much more than the occasional deception. This was confirmed by the disjunct between the behaviour and words of our opposition politicians during the last month.
George Orwell, the great political satirist who wrote the classics “Animal Farm” and “1984”, once observed that the very function of political speech is to hide, soften, or misrepresent difficult truths. Orwell was clearly sceptical about any expectation to the contrary: “Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” He could have very well included APNU and the AFC if he had looked beyond 1984 to 2011.
While we are not saying that the PPP is immune from the evident inbuilt political tendency to stretch the truth or even prevaricate, we have to acknowledge that Donald Ramotar began his presidency with a determined effort to test some new waters. It appears that he took David Granger and APNU at their word when they spoke of desiring a new kind of politics; a politics not of acrimony and backbiting but one of consultation and compromise. Hard as it is to believe, it seems that he was able to overlook the distortions and outright lies of the AFC before and during the campaign.

Evidently, Ramotar’s new administration was willing to revive the notion of “inclusive governance” that the Jagdeo administration had placed on its “dialogue agenda” with Desmond Hoyte back in 2003. Ramotar made two very interesting offers immediately after the elections. First, he called for the formation of a “Tripartite Committee” in which plenipotentiaries of the three parties in Parliament – the PPP/C, APNU and AFC – would meet to discuss policy perspectives on governance under the unique configuration the elections had delivered.
This was a remarkable initiative and demonstrated both the confidence of President Ramotar in the rhetoric of the opposition and in his own good faith. This newspaper is on record as being quite sceptical of the first ground. The president named his delegates to the Tripartite Committee – Gail Teixeira and Dr Roger Luncheon – and waited for the opposition to name theirs and for the discussions to begin. And waited, and waited until he decided that something was amiss as the opposition betrayed their pre-election promise to seek compromise when they manoeuvred to grab and monopolise both the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker position. This was the chasm between the opposition’s words and their performance that revealed “untruth”. Thankfully, the president removed his offer from the table.
The second demonstration of good faith by the president in taking the opposition at their word was for them to nominate qualified individuals from their ranks to have an input into the budget formulation. This offer was also spurned: with their majority in Parliament they now expediently forget their words of cooperation. They first focused on capturing the speakership and now demand “collaboration” (read ‘control’) over the budget process.

For Guyanese, reading the daily news means speculating continuously about what the politicians – all politicians – really mean when they make promises. The opposition has now reconfirmed the people’s cynicism about politics, notwithstanding the new administration’s efforts to set a higher standard. We call upon the opposition to pull back from the slippery slope on which they have embarked. We accept that a certain amount of puffery is maybe par for the course in politics, but the virtue of honesty must not be disregarded capriciously. A basic intent to be truthful, along with an assumption that people can be generally taken at their word, is required for all sustained civilised dealings.