By Gibson W. Jerue
Stack Reminder
Let’s talk generally. Times have elapsed expeditiously. Two years ago, you were clearing your desk to vacate the Capitol Building to ready yourself for another task – to assume a herculean duty as president of the nation. Imagining that you were enthralled by everything. Thinking about the presidency alone was tantalizing, I assume. You may have played president in the mirror. It dawned on your wife, Clar, at that she was about to be called the “First Lady”. It was not to be home country – Jamaica, it was for a small West African nation. At that point of self-appraisal, the stack reality of what you were about entering into dissipated. You were to become a political zombie, drunken with unsolicited smiles, laughter, handshakes, and praises, some of them fake and meaningless. I bet you remember that night when it became apparent you will be sitting in the office of the President, that the bulk will stop with you, that your words and actions would determine whether this country moves forward or declines into the abyss of doom.
By the way, have you given yourself pat on the back yet? Come to think about it. Years ago you were that dusty-looking Gibrata boy with a faint vision of where life was taking you. Before long, you began to see light at the end of the tunnel. That end of the tunnel you used to see is the presidency. But nobody told you that creatures, dangerous predators were inside the tunnel that you were about to pass before you reach the end. And even while you are standing at the very edge, those creatures veered and are coming after you in the hope they will eat you alive or throw you overboard. Even while you are still nursing the bruises of the scratches of your most formidable and fiercest antagonists, the flaming arrows will come your way. Ain’t nothing going to stop them. In fact, you will marry to these adversities. Was it not what you signed up for? I bet you did not presage that.
Lest you forget that some of the people are coming after you for divers reasons. They want your job; they want a piece of your flesh; but others simply are pushing you to work for them, to put smiles on your faces, to elevate their lives, to push the reset button and move the country forward. So far, that seems difficult for you. Many are not interested in any excuses. The hurts are too much. The suffering is humiliating and some are about giving up. No amount of shifting blame would soothe their agony.
Mr. President, for 12 years you were practicing for this office. You saw what your predecessor endued. Your party made governance a hell for her. I would assume you were jotting down interest areas, drawing your agenda for how you would tackle them. You had crossed mid-way into politics – a senator – and not the novice you were during the 2005 political season.
By the way, did you not know our people do not forgive anybody for their rice? Did you not know that the dual currency was a disaster? Did you not know that the economy was in its initial fall [and now on free fall]? Did you not know there would be opposition elements at your throat? Did you not know that you will be answerable to the people, no matter how? Did it cross your mind that some would cuss you mother as their way of dialoguing? Did you not know that there would be hundred ways your words would be interpreted? Oh well, let’s talk again tomorrow, Mr. President in more specific terms.
