Personally embarrassed at leadership disgrace

Jul 11, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

I am embarrassed at what our leaders have done to themselves. It is how they disgraced themselves in their behaviours, their relationships, their managements of the trusts and responsibilities placed in their hands. I am sickened that foreigners from the Far East could travel this distance West to poke fun at our leaders, to make people like me cringe and wishing that I was in some other place.
I started listening to a taped conversation of foreigners conversing, and I had to stop about a third of the way. They were laughing at our leaders, my leaders. I couldn’t take anymore, and I speak not about money laundering or such. For it was appalling, and so much so that it sent me scurrying for cover to hide my shame at the humiliations that our leaders have brought upon themselves.
I heard one knowing foreigner uttering a laugh that was so loud that it had to start from his toes, work its way upwards, with a long stop in his belly to gather energy before it erupted in a blast of disrespectful sound. It was at the mention of the office and title of ‘president.’ Whether I respect him or don’t is beside the point, but he is President, my Guyanese President. And though his warts and sores are full-bodied, he is my President, and I am furious that others could insult him in this worst of disparaging, this most cackling, cynical, cruel manner.
What has the President done to himself? Why did he allow himself to be thought of this way, be derogated in this contemptuous, unmentionable, unforgivable display of dismissal of my head of state? Whether he deserves it or not is not the issue, this man is my leader, my president, and even I don’t resort to that sort of braying brutality in my worst thought of him. I am serious. My last question, another pained one, is how does he live with himself, when these thick shadows encircle him?
The Hon. Vice President and his people may think that the awe and admiration with which he is discussed is to his credit. Yes, but in what way? When his name is bandied about so casually by knowing and scheming foreigners as the man to know, the leader to approach, and the only proven power to do business with, a certain kind of helpful business transaction, what does this say? What does this say again and again, when my Vice President, a former multi-term President himself, could be spoken of so joyfully and expansively as the man to make things happen? Any kind of underhanded thing, what does this say about him, innocence claims and all? The problem is that what the Chinese were having such a good time over, discussing in such a matter-of-fact way, registers sharply because it is what all Guyanese have wrung their hands over. If this was a Hollywood production, it was a darn good representation of the facts of leadership life in Guyana.
The very fact that the Vice President’s name could come up in that type of circle for that kind of conversation says all that has to be said. I would have preferred to hear how hard it is to do tricky, shady, dirty business in Guyana because the leaders are so straight, so unbending, so protective of the great honours bestowed on them by the people that there must be approaching, messing with him. That to do so would be the equal of visa and commercial suicide. But that was not what I heard, not one syllable in that direction, not a single phrase or mindset possessing any such exemplary quality. As incredible as this sounds, I want to rush to the defense of the President and Vice President and set the record right with these lying, distorting, exaggerating outsiders, but I have nothing to go on, absolutely anything that is favourable to speak on their behalf. I am weaponless.
So, I lick my wounds and retreat in shame. I wish it weren’t so, for these exposed, embattled, and embarrassed leaders are my President and my Vice President. And this is regardless of whatever regard I have for them both. Guyanese may shrug, not care. I do care, am ashamed. I take these things seriously.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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