H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Lies and cover-ups

Apr 02, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – The political soap opera in the United States is now beginning. Former President Donald Trump now makes the kind of history that he should relish; he stands as the central figure of attention, a leader enmeshed in scandal. Only in the good ole USA, for all its warts and faults, can a former White House occupant be indicted, tumbled this low. I look on and wonder if something of this nature could ever happen in Guyana. The answer comes instantaneously: never. Certainly, not today.

GHK Lall

On its face, hush money for sex shouldn’t be such a big deal, rise to further poisoning of the raw partisan passions in already sharply polarized America. But it does; there is this indictment. The stormier undercurrents are about coverups, campaign financing sleights-of-hand, falsification of records, and shell companies. The steam of sex is sufficient to push all those worrying practices into the background. Who cares? In America, there is care about political leaders getting embroiled in violations of the law, less about matrimonial transgressions, individual morality.

In 1973, sitting President Richard Nixon learned that the hard way, and had to go his way under duress. The Watergate coverup was not about a simple burglary, as first made out to be. It had all those other felonies about which we have gleaned from so many revelations since then: a leader knowing, then lying, and next shrinking into a ball to make himself small. I direct attention to that forgotten smoking gun, the tapes and that lengthy piece suspiciously missing, inexplicably blanked out. A handful of principled men fired on a Saturday night added grist to the mill, but thanks to the Washington Post and its two dogged and versatile reporters, history changed course. How about such here, rather than scurrilous social media posts?

Presently, history is being made again with another American President (a former one), who entangled himself so much that he would have difficulty differentiating himself from snakes in full mating ecstasies. What a web he has coiled around himself…. The strangest of bedfellows (allegedly, obviously), willing lackeys (lawyers in attendance) to do dirty biddings leading to dirtier deeds, and a baying crowd (politicians, press, and partisans) all lined up for or against, with intensifying rancorous passions.

We have seen some-perhaps, all-of this, right here. I would say most likely more, and we only know a quarter of it. It is a solid enough quarter. In Guyana, our political soap opera did not involve the musky aroma of ladies of the evening, but the peculiar scent of a gentleman of fortune. He came from the Far East, and did he engage in the Guyanese versions of fun and frolic? Did he enjoy the local political leadership games and the extensions of grand gestures? Without being titillating, there was petting, stroking, and panting using the people’s assets.

Large tracts of land, business deals that scream smoke first, then molten fire. Some people like their desires in the flesh (sex), others are rapturous with cash. There is no stain to track, no rumpled laundry to wash, though a different kind of laundering had to have taken place, given all the allegations and confessions now residing in the public domain.Those were only the first snowflakes of Guyana’s political winter.

When Americans show their hand, only a few fingers are first visible, from the wrist up is kept in reserve to deal with later situations. Americans dangle over the head, and hold to ransom. The usual result is that leaders can’t move, can’t flinch, can’t blink. Isn’t this what Guyanese live with today? After all the sound and fury about doing this and that about binding legal instruments reigning supreme over national patrimony?

Nobody has said anything about blackmail (keeping on a short leash) to this point, but the trump card is that a great many of the Guyanese people don’t care. As frequently said, it is nothing personal; only the enduring permanency of interests that always aces any friendship. Check with Burnham. Leaders in Guyana Governments should also remember that little lesson from history, 1956 more precisely, which involved some French and British parachuters in the Suez Canal area. The British were shocked when their sworn ally, America, said get the hell outta there, and right now!

Guyanese may prefer not to remember a mysterious Oriental fellow who was here, and who has since disappeared. It was about who was fingered, what was possibly covered up, and who stood up for whom. Some Guyanese in high official positions are playing a dangerous game, while walking a precarious tight rope. What is covered up and lied about today eventually sees the light of day. I point to the identification parade in America and its star attraction, Donald Trump. Because it represents a little of me, I extract from Pastor Parker’s 1853 sermon: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see, I am sure it bends towards justice.” Indeed, it does.

(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.)