Where are the genuine and humble among our wise and learned?

Jul 20, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
I speak about shared governance of the widest breadth, and the reflexive passionate condemnations rage. I think I have a better sense of what it is to be a child molester, betrayer, and collaborator; a serial one and the worst of them. This is what our racial politics does to us.
As I talk of inclusive and national, I ask simple questions. First, where among the many learned and wise (we have some) among us? What about the doctor do-littles (speak and write much, but do nothing) chartered accountants adept at figures (but disfigured otherwise), and legal eagles aspiring to luminosity (yet unlit in enshrouding darkness)? They tell me and the world about all the weaknesses of the winner-takes-all system, and then they resist mightily that which could shed some light, just a little for a way forward? Where is the genuineness and humility to look inward, away from the noisome crowd, and distance from what destroys us, and now worse than any time prior?
All stand as majestic monuments for constitutional reform but are inseparable from the losing winner-takes-all situation. Whither constitutional reform when coalition or opposition is in power? We speak the celestial and reap the diabolical; I say we need more than reform; we need a brand new one. But how do we ever get anywhere near there, even to starting to there, with one or the other racial political behemoths at the helm? There is the record of their intransigence, and of our ceaseless circumstances, of which I speak no more. Clearly, we set ourselves for more of the same, and to repeat the same warping cycle every five years.
Then, we flourish oratorically about Truth and Reconciliation, but remain fixed in racial silos of who cheated, who won, and who lost. We cannot speak of truth nor reconciliation unless we denounce racial allegiances. I identify not with such, so I can speak to truth. The truths of this or that commission set up for Lindo, and Linden, and Rodney and look at the many mysteries, and few revelations. But we want more of the same self-serving hypocrisies from the same unreconstructed racist political sources; so, we pretend at something about truth and reconciliation. Count me out of that abject foolishness leading nowhere. We have been widely and rightly disparaged as mud-heads; what is in our heads?
Unless we separate from what has wounded soul, we intensify wretchedness. How we love to quote and cite Mandela and Martin and Mohandas. We have to live like them. Me and you can be. We can be more Sadat and less Stokely or Subhas or Sharon; Rabin and not Rudolph (Hess).
Ponder this: once, I lauded publicly political stalwarts Sam Hinds and Roger Luncheon; and the rush came: he has cloven hooves and horns on head. Today, I parse for positives (self-determination, fixing our house) from Minister Raphael Trotman recent comments, and I am the foreman in the devil’s workshop. I must be doing something good to have incurred broadsides from both warring factions. A good friend (I hope I still am to him), Dr. Thomas Singh warned years ago to be careful with politicians; he was right. But there comes a crossroad, where writing must stop and doing start. I hope I did some good, through an example that good could be done. A close American friend living counselled: lie with dogs and fleas follow. He, too, is right; but it is part of life’s lessons and growing.
When I question the involvement of foreigners (my fellow Americans cherished), I am a communist, a reactionary. No less a person than Cheddi Jagan labelled them, “the juggernaut of the north.” Where are his people now? I hear of a military base denied to the US, and I recall the plenipotentiary visiting local leaders, and I wonder what was promised, who bartered. My point is this: when we are divided and ruled, we continue the hatreds, the untruths, the unconstitutional, and being unreconciled. Yet we insist on staying the course with what has failed (with foreign assistance).
When I advocate heads together, curses cascade. If this is price, let it be. For all their flaws, I want to live like Nelson and Luther and Karamchand. Mia Mottley said, “truth hurts.” The truth is we stay with what is there, and we go nowhere. That is my truth. I grope in the darkness amidst the hornets.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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