Elections – Guyana’s own national sport

Apr 21, 2020 Editorial

This might be found jarring, but there are no sports. And since there are no sporting events, there is nothing else for the multitudes following teams and heroes engaged in competitive combat. For many across the globe, life has lost its many planks, its main callings, its many meanings.
There are no stirring television programmes, no rocking stadiums, no howling hordes of people, whether in India (cricket), the USA (basketball), or the UK (football). The distractions and obsessions enabled by betting are gone, zero excitement is the name of the only game in town after town.
The bars (a good thing) and restaurants (necessary) have been taken away, leaving many nervous wrecks and lacking in moorings, since they have no other life, but the sporting life lived for and now longed for in the hope of some return to normalcy. Many are left in a bad state: agitated, upended, and not knowing what to do with themselves. Armchair psychiatrists they have become, analyzing themselves, and shrinking from what they discover of themselves.
Unlike the rest of the world, this is not the case in Guyana. Guyanese inhale a different air, imbibe from a different jug. Their booze reminds of the sweet nectarine of the gods, has all the instantaneous effects of earthy crack cocaine, plus the identical harrowing hangover, the tortured withdrawals forced upon those who were reckless and now must deal with the dangerous.
We have our Olympics and world championships rolled into one: elections they are called. This is our sport, our fascination, our lifework that makes the blood boil at individual and national level, the sum of the life loved. We do not need any scoreboard, since we already have one driven by the voices screaming in our fevered minds, our pierced existences.
Elections season thrill and chill, blow up and blow away, build up and then let down. Still, we the people, declare ourselves vastly contented with the way things are, and would not do a single thing that changes anything. We plod along in the impenetrable smog of the mutual resentments from our narrowed world. It is about who cheated, who is seeking to trick and snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Our national sport, which connects all willingly or unwillingly, entraps all easily and without any degree of difficulty. Our scorecards tell the public stories: how many days and counting since that fateful contest on March 2nd. How many votes stolen or attempted to stuff down throat and consciousness, via the desired rapid closure from a still more hurried count. It has been the longest of long counts, to grab a line out of sporting lore.
And how many, mainly in GECOM, who have allegedly besmirched themselves by condoning or, worse yet, actually participating in deceiving first and then covering up afterwards.
In a nation with an unacknowledged alcoholism problem, bars are helpful and a sturdy crutch to have open in a time of stress, fears of losing, and uncertainty as to what follows next. But they are not necessary, not when we have our own national sport, which is the circus and all-consuming spectacle of national elections.
That is music to our ears, the hit parade made up of one song only: we win, only we must win. That is our fight song and battle song, the nourishing ambrosia of citizens arrayed on both sides of a storm-battered divide. The virus may have taken away our liquids and our hold on life, but as long as it does not impede our elections, then all is well with the world, as is seen through Guyanese eyes.
There is still another characteristic that makes Guyanese citizens unique in the sporting annals. At the end of regular games, spectators and team supporters pick up the pieces, go home, and refocus on the things that matter, such as living well and living right.
Not so Guyanese, for in the sport that is of Elections Guyana, it is the other interests and priorities of life that are forced to give way. Elections takes precedence, elections matter, all else must give way. It is a hell of a national sport: one that makes losers of us all.

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Elections – Guyana’s own national sport

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