OP-ED: If Georgia, why not Guyana?

Dec 11, 2022 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Midnight train to Georgia” finally arrived, and look who it deposited. Ray Charles, American Blues immortal, did have Georgia on his mind, while all I have is Guyana on mine.Look at what happened over in Georgia, America and, like Ray Charles; I think of what could be, even though such look like distant dreams forever unrealized.

Two non-white men battling for a senatorial seat in Georgia of all the places in America’s Deep South.Who would have thought that over 150 years after the American Civil War, that men like Warnock and Walker would be going toe to toe for a place on Capital Hill, DC.  Georgia, a bastion of the old Confederacy and the new one (the Klu Klux Klan); Georgia, rock-ribbed, red-blooded for still existing Jim Crow values and visions.  Now a son, who has to have some strain of slave or sharecropper in him, is going to Washington (again) to stand for the interests of White and Black Georgians, and those Guyanese who have made their home in Atlanta.

I am thinking of that Georgia, and how far it has come, and this prompts me to think of the many small and large Georgia(s) in Guyana, and how little we have traveled from the days of our first civil war.  It is of how we refuse to move forward a little foot at a time, for some fresh space, small social oasis that higher ground could furnish as shelter, so urgently needed.  Instead of moving ahead in honest fashion, humbled by our past mistakes, eager to undo our failures, and earnest in searching for the kind of society that makes us masters of our own destiny, we retreat from such thinking, automatically reject those who call for it.

Call for it, not make it a shallow propaganda tool of it, but chamber of the heart.  Georgia has come a far way from bloodshed and bigotry, but still has many miles to go.  I face that reality.  Where have we genuinely gone?  Not politics.  What have we seriously tried?  Not gimmicks.  What are we really interested in other than what suits the ambitions of one, and not all?

We had some real bad times in the 1960s, and since.  But the worst of times, by my humble interpretation, was two years and some ago, but beginning 19 months prior.   Bruising, battering, and brutalizing just skim the traumas; and this was without piercing or a speck of bloodshed.  Yet here we are, even more roiled, still more vicious, and definitely farther apart as a nation, as a people.

Some people came here, watched, held our hands, and helped.  They made recommendations.  Change the State media apparatus, arrangements.  We have, but with tricky and devious hailed as noble improvements.  Fix the electoral machinery, but efforts underway have already unleashed their own brands of ancient, proven venoms.  Whether media or elections or constitution, we keep revisiting old grounds and repeating the same unhelpful ruses clothed in some supposedly fresh, clean apparel.  We all know, those still with clear head and clean thinking, that what is put in public is more ragged and rottener than before.  No matter how many Christmas lights are strung around them.  No matter how many legalistic or partisan speeches, attacks and defenses, are made concerning them.

I ask myself whether we really want a country, or what we really desire is a society of inequity, and the fear, possibly the reality, of ongoing instability?  Forbes Burnham had his party card, and many who never voted for him got one.  Then came 1992, and all Guyana finally came to grips with who was who, and of what Burnham was doing all along.  It is now 2022 and, like Burnham, President Ali persists in thinking that he will prevail with his calling card.  It is the containment of temporary charity under the stress of circumstances, some personnel face washing (just like Burnham), and the usual self-congratulations for having bought another day (and set of people), to carry on in the old Guyanese way.

It may have worked before.  But not now; not with all this wealth, and those who get the hog of it, I caution that the embers of our never cooled animosities stir reflexively.  Georgia, America could slightly lift itself out of its prejudiced past, and invest so much trust and power in a nonwhite citizen.  It is of progress, however paltry.  If Georgia can, where so much blood was spilled, and chains (and rope) uncoiled, then Guyana’s Leaders must find it in themselves to move away from bitter past and present. Guyanese of independent, and authentic inclusive vision must lend throat and feet and fingers to make the progress of elsewhere take hold right here.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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