Why would anyone want Guyana to die?

May 03, 2014 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
A well known columnist has clarified his position on today’s Guyana. “And what is that reality?” he asks.  “Power lies in the hands of the opposition to prevent economic financial ruin” of our country.
Apparently reflecting the combined opposition’s viewpoint, the columnist boldly admits they can easily vote approval of the anti-money laundering Bill.  But they will not. Instead they want a reward to do their sworn patriotic duty.
“If the business world in Guyana cannot press the Government on these two democratic fronts, then let Guyana die. Period!”
Mr. Frederick Kissoon was on cloud nine writing in his KN column of 4-30-2014 titled,
“Then let Guyana die. Period.” But Armageddon’s faithful can be no match for God’s own, who has laid it down in Matthew: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him, which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell”.
The economic stability of all Guyanese does indeed require the anti-money laundering Bill to become law. Since the government does not itself have enough votes in parliament to approve it, the Bill is in rough waters headed to the falls deadline.  Still, the Opposition refuses to give a helping hand. Elected to make things better for all Guyanese, they themselves want something in return.
Remember the electricity subsidy which Linden alone enjoys? Same story with the Opposition. Isn’t the opposition the eventual alternative government? How laudable is the Opposition (whose supporters advocate “death for Guyana”) to be so substantially better, by far, than the existing empowered?
Relegating all Guyanese to a mass death sentence due to some prior automatic prejudgment, really tells us how deeply troubled we are as a country. Georgetown’s citizens are prepared to reside amidst stinking garbage surrounding their daily existence. Would they be any more bothered by a public insanity without moral anchor to banish them, country and all, to oblivion?
Even so, you never know. There may be method in this madness which applies shock attack to remedy sleeping sickness by a jolting death wish. Mounted atop the cross Man Man (Naipaul’s Miguel Street) only wants to be our saviour.  What must be especially comforting are those who are reassured by the Bhagavad Gita’s “Never the spirit was born; the spirit shall cease to be never. Never was time it was not; end and beginning are but dreams.”
By, and from whom chaos is to again revisit through special delivery’s minions has been well established.  The columnist warns “If these two requests are rebuffed, devastation and draconian consequences… (omitted word – maybe “will” or “should”) …take over Guyana”.
Regardless, why does it then matter when tyranny’s ascendancy is inevitable past any ultimatum?
Richard Dawkins, in ‘Unweaving the Rainbow’ wrote “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of the Sahara desert. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats and scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people (in existence). In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”
Why would anyone want Guyana to die anyway? What would become of Guyanese if their country goes up in flames, – is best addressed only by the columnist himself.
“Go thou, and fill another room in hell. That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire That staggers thus my person…”is how Shakespeare’s Richard II has dismissed impending doom.
But with the worldwide focus on the Rodney Commission of Inquiry (RCOI), this sounding off may be seen as another Don Quixote gallop to divert our gaze to yonder windmills in their minds.
In a democratic country, all Guyanese were most free to vote in 2011 for their own betterment. Our current woes are by our own choice in our parliament’s predicament.  A similar uncertainty was reflected in the 1964 elections which also empowered the previous PNC government to host Reverend Jim Jones to lead his flock into mass suicide. Only the PNC has the most outstanding résumé of death experiences with 1600 innocent people either killed or injured at Wismar in 1964 before independence and some 800 dead in 1979 amidst Jonestown’s jungle green.
Death by many years of slow starvation under that party’s stewardship and calculated brutality against PNC opponents (1964 to 1992) is hardly the best recommendation to become re-elected.  Regardless, they still have that right to government by free and democratic elections according to the Guyana Constitution.
Added to its honing violent 1962-1964 practices, it explains the urgent necessity to camouflage the sullied PNC’s reputation under A-P-N-U sheep’s clothing.
Who are the best in philosophy most capable to “let Guyana die”?
Says the “Earl of Sandwich: ‘Pon my honour, Wilkes, I don’t know whether you’ll die on the gallows or of the pox. Replies John Wilkes: That must depend my Lord, upon whether I first embrace your Lordship’s principles, or your Lordship’s mistresses”, as retold by Sir Charles Petrie in The Four Georges.
Will the anti-money laundering Bill be finally approved by our patriots in the National Assembly?  Not unless the merchants of death and destruction, like Sampson, would prefer destroying the temple of Guyanese solitude.  But “For certain, is death for the born. And certain is birth for the dead; Therefore over the inevitable, Thou shouldst not grieve” (Bhagavad Gita).
Noticeable is the columnist crooning that “the private sector in this country wants to save their businesses from devastation and draconian consequences of the failed anti-money laundering legislation, but they want APNU and the AFC to do it for them.”
Well why not?  Has the Opposition become resolved not to contest future elections to replace the PPP/C government? When the Opposition can yet deliver the goods and enhance their image without being in government, why is there need for any kickbacks when patriotism is what matters? The PPP gave “critical support” to the PNC government when needed; the unemancipated Opposition would rather all Guyanese go to hell! Let the wise speak of death. It has no sting.
Barry Long, from the audio tape ‘Seeing through Death’, (1983) wrote: “You are a player in the rigorous game of living. You can’t blame the game if you don’t believe the rules or bother to remember them. The first rule is: every player dies; none knows when it’s coming; the youngest and best often go first. Everyone has to play. The game goes on forever – or until you win. You win by finding death before it finds you. The prize – is life.”
Where the unwise would give us constant hell, “the tired and the poor yearning to breathe free” continue to  find solace amidst stinking garbage unlike Lady Liberty’s  enhanced tropical Federalism of Guyana. Surely that unemancipated mentality of more garbage and Rodneyite prompt death is not what is warehoused for use.
Sultan Mohamed

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