High as a kite

Apr 10, 2023 Editorial

Editorial…

Kaieteur News – In the tradition of the Easter Season, all Guyanese should be flying high, with the world raising their eyes to measure the long arc of their flight, the rich freedoms that their prosperity brings. Disastrously, only a few Guyanese are ‘highfliers’; mainly political top dogs, and their cronies of helpers, defenders, and enablers. Their nests are well-feathered with rich pickings from the nation’s lavish patrimony. As they are flying high, like kites, many Guyanese cannot even get off the ground, so burdened they are with life’s draining demands, so feeble their pitiful existence.

The kites of the network of Guyanese at the top of the local pyramid are shiny and fancy. They can go any place, do anything, create quite a stir in their passage. There are the expensive and prestigious mechanical chariots to show off newfound wealth, the castles in quiet communities that speak to arrival and ascension, and the opulent lifestyle of those who are close to the Guyana gravy train, its precious natural resource gifts.

In conspicuous contrast, there are those Guyanese at this Easter Season, who cannot even afford a kite for their little ones. They can only harbor fleeting dreams of Mercedes, even a Mazda, while they patiently wait in rain and shine for the next minibus to show up, and with a space in its crowded confines for some of them. This is what the incredible patrimony of a blessed country has reduced the bulk of its citizens to: the barrenness of squatting area ghettos, with hopes of upward movement to their own dignified homes and mortgages, which could tie their noses to the grindstone for the next 30 years. Oil by the ocean, and so many open mouthed in hunger, that goes unsatisfied, in needs that go unaddressed, in anguish that no one cares about. Their fellow citizens at the top of resource heaps, feast on salmon and scotch whiskey, while Guyanese at the bottom count themselves lucky if they could get a bite of sprinkles of leftover rice and whatever crumbs that they can scramble, lock their eyes upon.

This is Easter of 2023, seven years after the first great discoveries were announced. Instead of all Guyanese flying as high as kites, many of them are flapping around like birds with a wounded wing. It is of the imbalances and injustices that infest this nation’s natural resource endowments. A small group is around the banquet table, while the big Guyanese crowd has no choice but to gather around the garbage bins. They hope for the pittances of scraps, the indignity of handouts, the charity of politicians and a national government that have both lost their ethical bearings, their moral compass.

Even the people that put them into power, the poor ones, are given the back of the hand. Do not be seen, and do not even think of making a sound so as to be heard. That would be sacrilege, even seditious and treasonous, if those in charge were to have their way. All of this can be avoided, if only those same haughty and unhearing ones with the levers of power in their hands could be unselfish. If only they could summon the courage, the wisdom would follow on the positives that could be possible, all of which would be nationally enriching to the point of the unimaginable.

But they shiver and shrink before the foreign schemers and oppressors, first from an absence of the strengths needed, but still more importantly, and meaningfully, from the deepening perceptions that they have compromised themselves. It is what forces the most powerful presences and voices in Guyana to speak in trembling whispers (when they speak at all), and to recoil from confronting the foreign exploiters with any push towards the table of discussion and renegotiation. So much could be had, but so little is attempted, because so much is feared from the hands of foreigners who pound our Guyanese masters into pathetic submission.

When our leaders go limp, they drag Guyanese down and dig a deeper hole for them. It is Easter, and there is no leadership wind to lift the kites of poor Guyanese. So they languish – so they punish in this season of revival and redemption.

burdened, demands, Government, Guyanese, resource gifts

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High as a kite

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High as a kite

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