Something should come through from all of this

Aug 21, 2020 Letters

---

DEAR EDITOR,

I am reading what is below the captions these days. Mr. Glenn Lall, his newspaper, his radio station, and his team are all hailed as saviours and bastions of democracy and being heavily invested in the bruising struggle still not anywhere near to being fully over. I think it has been well-earned and well-deserved. Now I go a little further.
Before continuing, I share a few snippets in the interest of full disclosure. I am a contributor to KN via a couple of channels. Also, I have my sharp differences with Mr. Lall, which are sometimes philosophical, political, and concerning the practical and the timing of certain things. Now with those behind I can proceed.
There is no other citizen of this land, no other media presence, which has been as consistent (to the point of uninterrupted constancy) on the matter of our oil. He is unrelenting to the degree where I suspect that it has become an obsession. About its rewards. About its management. And about getting what is fair and equitable, and just, too. I am sure that he has angered local political and bureaucratic bigwigs with the driven nature of his pressures and exposures of weakness, of failures, and of the meaning of it all for Guyanese. Some of us are known to be prolific (yours truly being no exception), but he leaves everyone in the dust. And just as he has angered the locals, I am certain that he has alarmed the powers that be at ExxonMobil with his piercing reminders – many daily reminders – of the startling injustices and embedded prejudices at work in the corporate behemoth’s dealings with us. If those powers at Exxon have any conscience they should be in extremis when they face their families, when they approach their gods. That is, if they do have any gods, other than Mammon as immortalized by Milton, and Mephistopheles, with whom they should be very much at home due to the corporate evils meted out to Guyana. For this alone Mr. Lall and his people stand alone and should be so recognized.
But there are some people who go looking for trouble, and in Guyana, there is none better at it than Mr. Lall and his rambunctious baby boomers, Kaieteur News and its sister, Kaieteur Radio. Both have been recognizable, irrepressible in that darkest of Guyanese alleys, which is that of the ugly, barbaric, and profaning world of Guyanese politics. Things are so terribly devastating and consuming here that every street and airport and seaport and gold course and cricket ground should be named ‘Guyanese Politics’ or ‘Political Guyana’ or ‘Dangerous Politics’. But it is into those minefields that Mr. Lall leads his band of brothers (and sisters) at KN.
The coalition people (meaning PNC loyalists) loved him and his heavyweight productions when he went after the PPP, pre-2015. The paper could do no wrong for them, this I observed in cooler climes. And I also observed how the PPP leadership and its devotees hated him and his output. I said to myself that the man must be doing something right. And then came May 2015, and the jarring realities of Guyanese politics.
The same man, this character conjured out of some madman’s brain, Lall and KN, are being beaten on the head with the high-heeled shoes of those, who once hailed them as Guyanese truth tellers and Guyanese oracles. The citizens whipping themselves into hysterics would be those associated with the PNC, who now knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of his daily slings and arrows that left them weeping and gnashing their teeth. The PNC of post May 2015 knew what it was like for the PPP pre-2015. As a coalition supporter, I did not like some of this, but appreciated that genuine frankness and objectivity leads to enmity. Unsurprisingly, it was the turn of the PPP and its cabals to rejoice at the tide seen as favourable. I urge that party’s leaders and followers to get real, get some sense from this second half of 2020.
In August 2020, we are blessed with near perfect vision. Guyanese can see clearly where we were, and where we should not return, whether pre-2015 or in the interval between May 2015 and August 2020. Many citizens have said, like the stricken Jews after the Holocaust: Never again!
It is because of this that I warn the men and women in the hierarchy of the PPP and its voters not to take Mr. Lall (that one or this one) for granted. Amidst the rejoicing, just ensure that the right thing is done for this country, all of it, everyone of its peoples. When the PPP does right, everything is gonna be alright. I think, if only from the past record, Mr. Lall will be watching in true Police (of musical fame) fashion. I remind them: never again must be lived to the fullest in clean governance. I caution the party powers: be careful. Or else a ton of bricks, many such tons, will tumble down on heads. In the best Guyanese tradition, it may then be the turn of the reeling and wretched PNC clan to celebrate.
Something should come through from all of this: no friends. No allies. Only Guyana first.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

---

---