Introduction
A Peaceful coexistence could only continue to flourish in a nation if there is security and equal justice to all its citizens. Denial of the people’s rights and distortion of justice could lead to inevitable conflict, hatred and animosity. I believe, it’s high time for us Guineans to engage ourselves as equal partners in forging a New Guinea that secures our identity and equality of rights. This paper invites the youths and all patriotic Guineans to come forth and search for our common humanity to reconcile our bitterness towards one another. It asserts that factors of our moral potentials could serve as common ground for reconciliation and peace building among our people.
The Sources of a Great Lesson for Peace Building
In search of our common humanity, it is worth looking into the dogmas of many influential leaders who sought to change the world. Among the most prominence ones that I can cite on this occasion are Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Vaclav Havel and Nelson Mandela, just to name a few. All of their doctrines and philosophies point out to a common factor that highlights “moral potential” as the nucleus to our common humanity. They argued that, political legitimacy could only be advanced by developing policies that are consistent with all the people having equal opportunity to progress. And that any denial of fundamental human rights will hamper the political and economic progress of a society. To cultivate a progressive nation we should develop our “moral potential” to our utmost ability, which .these leaders have all set excellent examples for us to follow.
What is meant by our “moral potential”?
This, in fact, concerns our common humanity. Our moral potential is the ability, which seems to occur naturally in us as human beings, to feel empathy at the sight of the sufferings of our fellow beings. This sense of sympathy in turn can lead to a form of moral action.
However, the main point here is that, it is our moral potential that gives us our common values to humanity. It is our moral potential that gives us the capacity to appreciate our fellow beings and to sympathize with them when they are in trouble or when they are the victims of injustice. It is our moral potential which makes us cringed in horror when we saw the pictures of September 28, 2009 massacre of peaceful protesters at the Conakry Stadium.
In fact, almost everyone can give an example of a spontaneous sense of sympathy or concern with other that they have felt at some stage in their life. Some of the most vivid examples are the horror of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the reaction to the tsunami calamity in the Indian Ocean, the disaster of the 2005 Katrina cyclone in New Orleans, the pictures of war victims in Sierra Leone by Sorious Samura, or the recent earthquake destructions in Haiti. Acknowledging our moral potential is necessary for us to live as human beings. It is obvious that all human beings have some form of moral obligations towards one another and the simple fact that we always forge a moral system when we live together also supports the notion that we all share a moral potential. For example, what would it mean to say we have no moral potential? It would mean we could never trust each other. Our world then would be a world where each of us would only be capable of considering our own interest. And as such, we would look with indifference upon the weak, the suffering and even the death of others.
The killing and maiming of our citizens in various cities in our country, especially the Siguiri and Kourousa incident during our recent election, is a real case in point here, where each of the belligerent factions, the Malinke and the Peul regards the other’s plight indifferently. But what made it even worse was that, the government’s media was very partial and unjust in their reports of the calamities. They concealed the havoc that took place in the areas dominated by the Malinke faction and fallaciously exposed only those that occurred in the areas dominated by the peul. How can we shape the minds of our people as one nation striving towards a common goal to build our nation to prosperity, if our leaders and the state media are bias, unjust and insensitive of our common humanity?
Our Duties and Obligations
In view of Dr. King’s philosophy, all of us face one fundamental task in our life, and that task is one of resisting oppressions, injustices and chauvinism. With total dedication at every step and everywhere, in the world, we should resist irrational momentum of mysterious, impersonal and illegitimate power. We must resist its complex and wholly alienating pressures in all its forms, which could possibly instill fanaticism and despotism in a society.
“We ought to draw our moral standards from our natural world, heedless of ridicule, and reaffirm its denied validity. We must honor the wise with humility and recognize the limits of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them. We should admit that there is something in the order of beings which evidently exceeds all our competence. We must relate to the absolute horizon of our existence which, no matter what, we shall constantly rediscover and experience. We must trust the voice of our conscience more than that of all abstract rumors that infest the atmosphere of our societies.
We ought to tackle our problems in a spirit of cooperation and unity, instead of the callous behavior that currently exist in our communities. We should instill the notion of striving together into our minds, as patriotic men and women to build a just and more harmonious society by doing everything in our capacity to make sure that our people live in a perpetual peace and a happier life with more dignity and respect for one another.
Furthermore, from the words of Vaclav Havel, “we must not be ashamed of fact that we are capable of love, friendship, solidarity, and tolerance, but… we must also set these fundamental dimensions of our humanity free from their private exile and accept them as the only genuine starting point of a meaningful human community. We must be guided by our own reason and serve the truth, the only truth, under all circumstances as our own essential experience”. Let the premise of our modest effort be that “government exists for men”, not the contrary.
Moving Beyond Election
Democratic elections are widely recognized as a foundation to legitimate government. Now it’s the time for us to move beyond election to nurture a democracy that requires respect for the rule of law, in which all persons, institutions and entities, private or public, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards. It’s our right and duty to build a civil society that pushes political institutions to be agile and responsive to our peoples’ need. So, to rephrase President Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 in Cairo, Egypt, no matter what, as patriotic citizens, we should urge our government “to set a single standard for all who would hold power; to maintain its power through consent not by threat or coercion; to respect the rights of the people; to foster a spirit of tolerance and compromise; to place the interests of the people and the legitimate working of political process above all party politics.” Without these elements, which are the core to making a true democracy, our election would be considered as nothing but a mere vain or failure.
Conversely, after election, civil society movements ought to be less dramatic. They should, instead, opt to engage in a daily struggle against repressive laws and corruption, and to ensure the fair representation of all ethnic-groups, interests, and ideas. They should strive to find a common ground and join efforts to heal the wounds of the election without any remorse or recrimination, without anger or any rancor. What Guinea is in need today is unity, and everyone is longing for a larger measure of compassion and care that will allow us to work together for the good of our country.
Conclusion
As youths and future leaders of our nation, the most natural and logical development of our moral potential today is to realize that the empathy and sympathy we can feel for others can be extended or shared with all humanity. There is no reason to limit or stop at the border of tribe, city, country or religion. In fact, today, we see more and more people and institutions acknowledging our common humanity. For instance, the United Nation’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” acknowledges that our natural field of concern is humanity and bases it on our moral potential by referring to conscience in its first article.
As mentioned earlier, there are many thinkers and writers who acclaims to the same sentiment besides Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the real hero who taught us to acknowledge our human potential, (and our common humanity),. Many national constitutions, (including the constitution of Guinea – our beloved land), embrace such concepts as human rights – adherent to the rule of law. But one of our problems in presenting any form of argument in our country is the apparent “death of truth”. Even though it is quite obvious that absolute truth appears to be unattainable, and anyone who claims to have discovered “truth” here will be instantly attacked. And this is what poses the real threat to the upward mobility and development of our nation. We should work together as one people to eradicate this threat in our society.
In parallel with these great thinkers, we are urged as patriotic citizens to be obedient servants of our country and to desist from denying our moral potential. We should also opt to encourage our newly installed democratic government of Professor Alpha Conde to foster an ethos of a community whereby we serve each other because we need each other’s services, not because it may benefit one party. When we affirm and act on this ethos, I believe, we will properly regard one another not as tools to get what we wants, but as equals who deserves each other’s respect. More emphatically, we can only function and flourish as a fair and just society if equality is shared amongst our people.
Finally, let us conclude by reiterating Dr. Martin Luther King’s words in a letter from Birmingham prison. These words may sound the alarm to all of us, and in particular our leaders, to deeply ponder on the current situation of our country, la Guinnée.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inseparable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. What affects one directly, affects all indirectly”.
The Guinean Gazette 