The unpalatable soup of the day

Sep 19, 2019 Editorial

First it is, then it is not. Then it is sensed, leading to questioning of senses. Was that real? Are we dealing in the real world? Or is it this something straight out of the spirit world? It is the seesawing world of national elections.
That would be challenging enough, if things were limited to that of a head spinning, eye ‘turning’ seesaw. Except that it is more than that nowadays. This elections business in Guyana today is best represented by a combination of living on a moving seesaw while gyrating inside a hula hoop and seeking to control an errant yoyo. Truth be told, that is not the end of the circus.
All Guyanese citizens, those who still have their heads screwed on right (and still care) may feel themselves to be in this whirligig of a situation. A closer look at the circumstances on the ground, and the almost daily revelations that come from the mouths of political Sphinxes tell the uninspiring story.
It is a tale laden with pathos. From the perspective of trapped citizens, it is better to have a lump in the head, than deal with more of the endless bumping and thumping over elections and when and how and in what manner. Turbulent, it has been and with no end in sight to the merry-go-round.
Businesses swoon; large segments of the public service sit on hands; and everyone waits for an announcement. Instead of the bugle of: it’s a boy, it has only been the whisper of: sorry, it is a false alarm. Yet another one. Go home and come back. Keep bags packed and ready to travel, with one eye open and glued to the clock.
This is leading an acute case of mass psychosis and the delusions that come with it. Perhaps, that is why this paper has so many brutal, ugly, frightening stories of Guyanese maiming and generally impatiently mistreating one another.
First, it was that elections should be held now and not then. Without missing a heartbeat, then transformed to just now and soon. Soon has since been rechristened into soon enough. Thus, March somehow took up residence in a later quarter of the year, only to have to be rebirthed to still another down the line. It is hocus-pocus and jiggery-pokery all wrapped into one, as in a nice, sweet Christmas gift, according to the latest tidings.
The word from all around is that delivery could be later in the year. As in this very year. That looks like a miracle by itself. Except that nobody is cheering just yet. Both opposition and government are careful to regurgitate what is the thinking and visions of GECOM. What it wants to do, how and when it wishes to go about this.
What the crafty political Herod(s) have danced around is what they really want. There is still the usual norm of challenge to this or that decision in motion, and with more promised. Everybody has a swarm of ideas as to how to go about the sorceries of elections in this country, but nobody is saying the truth out loud. The tough, heavy-duty truth, that is. Politicians, through their many cunningly-placed strategists and propagandists congratulate themselves about how slick they are over lists, Claims and Objections, and who should (or should not) be on the elections census rolls.
Amid these artful dodges, one date after another, comes to mind, blows the mind, and then leaves mindless. It is like the dream of a polygamist: who and what finds favour today. Through all of this, elections have now become the soup of the day. In Guyana, that now means unpalatable, stale and sickening.

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