The VP – a political hustler without peer

Jul 04, 2021 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

A year into the new Guyanese political order, I arrive at a place that speaks to searing, sobering reality. It has to do with the VP, and though endlessly agitating to the archduke and his minions, raw truths are what must be delivered in unsparing, unflinching terms.
I weigh the developments of the last year, conclude that Guyana’s Vice President is of that rare breed: a first-rate hustler in all senses of the word, a peerless political hustler; through dint of energy and application, he out distances the competition, makes rings around it. Frankly, he has no competition; contemporaries are left scratching for issues that barely stir specks of interest. The VP has tested ways to win over means of making the Guyanese kneel before him: lucre. This is a man relishing the ecstasies of conmen – a captive following of a quarter million uncaring and unthinking. Who is corrupt? Who cares, anyway? Go ahead, take all the money; it doesn’t matter. Jim Jones must be wondering where he went wrong; John Gotti, too.
I have heard him labelled genius by worshipers, to which skeptics added evil, the personification of it. I content myself with possessing a most macabre mind. Before there was: stridency, petulancy, and churlishness; now crude instincts for vulgarities are checked, save for financial ones. Today, oil greases his skids; no brakes. Criticisms are ignored, with trademark truculence, and feral snarling, lesser. No more such visceral retaliations; cunning prevails now, with oil magnets luring naysayers, protestors, resisters. Burnham had party card for favours; the VP has stealth bombardments that encourage secret agreements and party resignations from those seeking survival. The VP understands that forced commercial relationships with Black Guyanese do not translate to ballot support. He pays, accepts, the tradeoff: cosmetics. Men (women, too) fall over themselves to pay homage before his throne; I must give it to the man.
The VP’s version of personal stimulus is COVID-19 cash relief, job, contract, a spare nod for supplicants, and masterly fiddling. Look at president. Look at opposition undermined, effectively neutered. Nowadays, the Great Leader pronounces, as if from heaven, and human dominoes fall in line, or fall apart. I acknowledge the stellar student he is. Soviets taught how to deceive, compliments of a system based on falsehoods and fear; currently, Americans gift him spin. Ergo, Western capitalist spinning layered on communist deceiving; the former saturated with sly half-truths, while the latter overflows with commissions of full-out deviousness. The VP benefits from the best of both worlds, and it shows, in his new approach, the forced remade persona. He has shaken hands with the devil, who is worse off for the experience. Guyanese pay the worst price.
So, he waxes of sacred Guyana constitution behind compressed lips, but subverts it with both third term, and self-anointment with the divine rights of kings. Thanks to the VP, Guyana has progressed from a one-party state to a one-man government. In the shadow of the mighty VP, the manoeuvred head of state stands as a poor man’s presidential apology, a flea market configuration, a leader as willing performer in the comedy of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, against the tragedy of calculating Macbethian tragedy. Amid the local hysterias, the only ones who hold the VP in check, make him dance awkward jigs, are foreigners. Exxon butters his bread; the resident American diplomatic community has keys to his closets, costumes for his skeletons. As for Guyanese, they get to grin and bear content at making fools of themselves. Just like the opposition rendered non compos mentis. Welcome to Guyana’s punk culture of nuanced political hooliganism, thanks to Machiavellian Vice Presidential machinations. As Locke asserted: governments start by taking away liberty, then they take away everything else. Guess who is behind those ‘orchestractions’?

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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