H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – America is not heaven and earth, Guyana is heaven and earth

Apr 30, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – If anyone had said to me that Minister Robeson Benn had it in him, I would have waved them away.  But there was the Honorable Minister in the flesh, and full-throated voice: America “is not heaven and earth; Guyana is heaven and earth” (Demerara Waves, April 24).  Ahem, and Amen.  Just when I thought that nobody in the PPP, and I mean nobody, has anything remotely resembling the divine in them.  Not even those claiming to be about what isgodly.  Now, if it is said that their only god is money, or things unholy, then there could be the fraternity of agreement from this little corner.  Still, I see the pluses and downsides of Minister Benn’s public posturing.  It is my hard duty to inform (respectfully, naturally) of the error of his ways.

America “is not heaven and earth” qualifies as sharp insult to the hundreds of thousands of Guyanese for whom it is so; most of are PPP supporters.  Plus,thousands more on Duke Street angling for a visa in this glittering oil cosmopolis.  Or those hoping (futilely) for visa-free travel to the same America that Minister Benn so contemptuously dismissed.Being a beneficiary of the land of milk and honey, I should be agitated, but no offense taken, no pardon required.  Nonetheless, I must regretfully recommend that the Minister sticks to policing and properly supervising his adventurous, globetrotting senior staff.

The sense is that the minister has memories of big, bad, ole America.  To conveniently forgetful Guyanese, I offer: Down with the CIA!  Down with America!  Down with capitalism!  Minister Benn now reveals his scars from that time, for he is a son of those hurtful horrors, a good one.  His shabby, sickly peers may forget, but not the minister.  Like Paul Robeson of America, Guyana’s Robeson is an identical in-the-face man and stalwart.  I nominate him for president in 2025, or whenever America decides the date.

But Minister Benn did have one part of his political-ministerial-rhetorical equation right on the bullseye, but only partially.  He said: “Guyana is heaven and earth.”  The question for the bossy minister and his bigger bosses is simple: for whom, sir?  Guyana is heaven and earth for PPP (and PNC) parliamentarians.  Guyana is heaven and earth for all those pivotal public servants content to function as pawns and panjandrums.  Guyana is heaven and earth for those theorists, contextualists, possibly closet racists, putting on a good show of not being propagandists, despite breaking into daily heavy sweats doing exactly such.  Last, Guyana is heaven and earth for those captains of commerce whose bread is buttered with oil, gold, diamonds, and budget billions.

I am sorry, Minister, but there is no choice but to bring up those other hungry, forgotten, ignored, impoverished, weeping, scorned and dismissed Guyanese, the bulk of the citizenry.  His President and Vice President (they too are brothers) left me no choice, but to put them under the headlights.  With the deepest regret, Guyana is not heaven and earth for accursed Guyanese (though it should be).  Rather unhappily, Guyana is not heaven and earth, Minister, for police people and prison officers, those right under his own watch.  Most gloomily, Guyana is not heaven and earth for those citizens of this oil nirvana, who flock to Duke Street and dusty, dangerous backtracks to go to that same divine Atlantis that Minister Benn condemned so disparagingly.

America has it hellish sides, some of which are now palpable in waterlogged Guyana.  But it is still heaven when laid next to and matched against the infernal hell that is today’s Guyana, and as it has been transformed into that scorched state, thanks to the handiworks of his brethren and sorority in the governing PPP. Minister Benn is keen enough to know that it was the unheavenly and unearthly America that is responsible for his PPP being where it is today, and of which he is a prime beneficiary.  And if the Honorable Minister Benn thinks that an occasional handout to the down and out in Guyana is all that it takes to transport the wretched of this barren earth (according to him), to the delights of a slice of heaven, then he has lost more than his way.  He forsook most of those traits that make for better men, nobler citizens, ideal presences.

To minister and fellow Guyanese, this morsel I share.  I love America.  But I love Guyana more.  I do not love America less, when I can find the courage to condemn what my fellow Americans do here.  How they have wooed reasonable Guyanese men and women to abandon their residual honesty, their flaccid dignity, their limited integrity for the sweetness of Uncle Sam’s money and Godfather Alistair’s honeys.

Guyana could be heaven and earth, Minister Benn.  But it is not; not under his PPP; and not with this oil patrimony.  Not all that can be had from it.  I also harbor serious doubts whether Guyana could be heaven and earth under the PNC.  It is the diabolical that is in America, which looks like dooming Guyanese to live with the hellacious.

(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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• earth, GHK Lall, Minister, PPP, Robeson Benn

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