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A deep sense of shame
DEAR EDITOR,
As the days pass, and the advocates and adversaries labour before the regional consuls of the law, all Guyanese should feel a deep sense of shame and pain. I do.
Regardless of political affiliation or tribal identification, the remaining clear thinking, right thinking, and any kind of thinking Guyanese should shudder at how this nation is exposed in all of its political frailties, its intellectual perfidies, and its social barbarities.
Neighbours, competitors, foes, and observers are having a field day; a long interval of awe and disbelief as to how backward, how limited, and how insignificant in character those people (Guyanese) must be.
Starting with the tribunes in the CCJ, there has to be shaking of heads, and asking of selves: in this day and age, can any set of people be this left behind? Is there any equivalent of the tortured Guyanese nation-citizens, leaders, professional class, and thinking class – that is this far gone? This hopeless? I do not think so.
For in the slurry of arguments, questions and postures, the scarred, bleeding nakedness, the wretched details of the dreadful nature of this country is bared before all, for they themselves to recoil in scorn at the utter senselessness of Guyana.
It is where rudimentary issues of counting rise to the torture of illiterates wrestling with the demands of advanced rocketry; where domestic political consulting and converging for a marriage of minds is escalated to others supposedly wiser and more trusted; and where definitions and lists that impose different tyrannies and fears to different segments are so routinely lateraled to the judgment of nine recognized as saner and more sober.
Here is a magnificent nine removed from the putrid racial politics of Guyana appealed to, paid homage to, surrendered to in abandonment of the mental and spiritual faculties granted to Guyanese leaders, Guyanese voters, and Guyanese jurists. Nine strangers are asked to do what this country cannot do, adamantly refuses to do: to vote. To lay down the law to these warring children. Nine must vote for a society so handicapped in integrity, so destitute in reciprocal trust that it runs shamelessly before others for the wisdom of their charity, their judicial handouts.
It is one thing for people who, when by force of circumstances, are hurt and weak, fall short; it is altogether another thing, an unpardonable one, for any people to be so stubbornly, chronically dumb. To never learn. To refuse to grow. To trample upon its dreams, its potentials, its opportunities.
Because if a society is so paralyzed that it cannot appreciate nor address those fundamentals placed before the CCJ then how can it have a candle of a hope to manage, capitalize, and utilize constructively its natural blessings? To rise out of the stench-filled gutters of its terminal sicknesses?
Editor, that is the rawness of Guyana’s shallowness – indeed, its bottomless emptiness -that is on full humiliating exhibition before a perplexed and incredulous CCJ, before a condescending diplomatic world, and before the whole world as to the pathetic straits of a lost people.
On a personal note, this is the ultimate wounding. It is abdication and betrayal of pride and dignity, and palpable indication of the infantilism and retardations of this country. In many respects, it is still a colony in its mind, its outlooks.
To crown all of this off, most Guyanese observe the proceedings before the CCJ and take in stride. They go about their business, and embrace what humiliates and tarnishes every Guyanese, as if it is the most ordinary matter in the world. That Guyana is due the alms; like the homeless and hopeless, who sometimes aggressively make demands.
The mentality is that it is the way it should be; and through the morbid fascinations with the outcomes of the CCJ, as if there is absolute ignorance that what has been sent there represents an autopsy of country and society; a post mortem on a Guyana paralyzed from birth, and in creole: people who head ain’ good. At this rate, outsiders will have to be summoned to help count ballots. Maybe even make that ‘X’ for Guyanese, too.
To the national shame, to my own disgust, Guyanese reject the wisdom of the Chinese and insist on prostration before others to beg for fish (decisions); there is identical rejection and insistence on learning how to fish for self. Kowtowing shamelessly before others bears no stigma, brings no anathema. It is the ultimate in abject dependency. I cringe.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
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