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Pole vaulter and pole dancer: a tale of two leaders 

Aug 24, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

I take stock of our national leadership regime, and come up with a spectacular. One in an Olympic style pole vaulter; the other, a confirmed pole dancer.  It is what represents leadership at its best in Guyana, governance in action.

The leader that is a pole vaulter is all of that, with hops, skips, and jumps.  Into the thin air of truth, accuracy, and the physics of facts, which all bring crashing down to earth. Though some training and conditioning are evident, it is still a hard and heavy fall.  Things crumble.  Take this utterly lovely business of our new national motto called ‘One Guyana.’

It is really a PPP motto, but because its people say it, push it, are all for it, that automatically makes it the national motto, slogan and all.  I like the sound of ‘One Guyana’, but if it is exclusively a Freedom House envisioned and driven ‘One Guyana’ that tells me only one kind of people under that umbrella.  I look hard, probe deeply, but there is no place in that oneness for people like me.

Yes, I am an outsider in the considerations of those under the tribal tent, but as much as I may be a renegade Indian, a hostile (to use Howard Hawks’ language), they can’t take that away from me.  That is, the last part of renegade Indian.  So, when there is that last word that holds for those outcasts like me, then the prospects don’t look too good for those beyond the brown circle.  The pole vaulter we have for a leader may try to brush that aside, but he can’t hop and skip over this one.  Not when his policies and practices leave so many of the electorate out.  Not when his beauties about goodies represent who is included, who excluded.  These are the high stubborn hurdles that he can’t verbally leap over when he soars with those rhetorical songs of his that he relishes.

Point the pole vaulter to the prospects of transparency and accountability, and he is all for investigations.  This is the dope that he plants on Guyana, just like the Russians and Chinese do in real competition: conduct sham investigations, unleash kangaroo courts. When some Guyanese speak against those, they are branded as the plots of misfits, deviationists, and seditionists, as imagined by the pole vaulter leader who gets better at such things daily.  In his book, centrists, patriots, and independents are regarded as freaks; in the same way that missionaries and vegetarians once were.  I recall that the true test of character is to give a man some power, then watch what he becomes.  In sum, I see a leader beating his breast in self-congratulation and self-aggrandizement, while beating down those who point to the holes in his trousers, the missing zippers, the threads that come apart.

Then, there is the other exemplary Guyanese leader, a skilled pole dancer.  He goes around and around, sometimes upside down, while he holds on for dear life.  It is of a very clever leader at work, with his efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of Guyanese.  He performs these extended ‘talkathons’ to simpletons and skeletons, as he tries to make automatons of them. His stories never have a conclusion, only create more confusion.  This is what pole dancing does: it causes chaos in the minds of listeners and watchers.  Ask the leader about oil spill insurance and he has no reassurance to give.  Push him on renegotiation and he keeps going in circles.

The pole on which he holds on to is a greasy one; some of the stuff smears his face, his sweat.  Oh, the leader must be given credit for trying very hard, working tirelessly.  But it couldn’t be for Guyana; not with Exxon so happy, and Mr. Alistair extolling his Texas Gospel of Guyana’s best contract ever.  Dare to squeeze the leader on where he stands on the Chinese, and suddenly he is for the Taiwanese.  It took a moment, then I caught on: the accuser is Fukienese or Fujianese, maybe even Cantonese.  When questioned about production reports, there is shock, head spinning.  It is a symptom of too much pole dancing, sliding on the greasy.  Here is the bottom-line: pole vaulting and pole dancing are not striptease dancing, but they might as well be, given what these two have done to openness and straightness in this country.

Sincerely,

GHK Lall

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