If that is a promotion, then I am the King of England

Apr 28, 2019 Letters

Dear Editor,

I never thought that the mighty PPP marketing machinery would be bested and made to look seriously wanting. Well, I stand corrected. I never thought that the day would come when I could need help from linguistically challenged fellow Guyanese with the English Language. In this particular instance, I do.
When I learned that the Hon. Minister of Housing was “transferred” to the Office of the Presidency, my first belief was that the real politick of political parties, comrades, damage control, and easing out to pasture were in motion at full throttle, with everything under management. In my book, that transfer represented a second lease on political life, and an opportunity to save face for all concerned, including an obviously embarrassed and disgusted president. I mean if this was the army, it would have been the brig, followed by a court martial, followed by who knows what next. I would have recommended life in the prison in the political wilderness. But what does a dumb fella like me know?
For now I hear this astonishment and aberration of “promotion.” Has somebody lost their mind? Is somebody kidding me? Is somebody taking me and the rest of Guyana for being a pack of jackasses? What about a president struggling valiantly to hold the fort and to herd a bag of wayward cats into some semblance of honesty? Somebody should have had the decency not to add more salt to his wounds. This rises to the level of adding insult to injury; but I am so convulsed with laughter that I have pardoned the part about insult. That is neither euphemism nor exaggeration nor hedge; it an outright abomination, this development about promotion. Just to be ultra-careful, I went back and looked hard at that telltale word one more time: promotion. There is nothing creole about it, so I do not have to chastise myself, as to lack of vocabulary and understanding on that score. If that is a promotion, then all Guyana could use one of the same kind; and then the president has just incurred the risk (and wrath) of condoning what apparently amounts to wrongdoing; or at least unpardonable conduct.
Moreover, the whole apparatus of the Office of the Presidency comes under sharp scrutiny (and hilarity) as to what it really is at the core. A vibrant, upward career path for the worthy and trustworthy? Or an annex to Congress Place and Sophia? Or a shelter for homeless political operators? To state my position clearly, with few exceptions, I have never seen it as other than being a banishment, resting place, and ward for the politically terminal, when they are lateralled there. Nobody wants to pull the plug; so it the life support of a roof and a salary and an opportunity for the radical therapy of experimental cures. But no return to the land of the living.
Editor, I think that the (comrade) leader bent over backward to be accommodating by finding a place for the vacillating, weak-willed, seemingly compromised, and rather questionable. If my measure of the man is on the money, then I would believe that he was privy to much more than has been ventilated in the public domain. He would have decided that enough is enough. I, for one, would have sent people packing and in the most scathing and ignominious manner. But Mr. Granger is not that much of a hardliner and ballbuster. That is why I take so much issue with this patented nonsense about “promotion.” If that is a promotion, then I am the King of England, and I am not.
Sometimes, it is way better to keep one’s mouth shut and stay quiet; wiser to go gently into the fog. It obscures and allows the storms to blow over soothingly. Let the clouds roll by. Stay quiet and be thought of as a fool instead of opening mouth and proving it. And now proving so beyond a shadow of a doubt. Where do they get characters like these from anyway? God bless Guyana. I need some of those for myself, too.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
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