Governing – the good and the less

Jun 04, 2023 News

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall…

Kaieteur News – At an early hour last week, I noticed some half full white bags right by the fence. Looking up and down the empty and still quiet street, the same half full sacks were spaced out along the fences of private residences and a government office. A few hours later, I received an education on what the overnight arrival of those sacks meant.  It had to do with drainage: cleaning and clearing, and generally sprucing up the surroundings.  It is a good development.

Thinking of drainage in Georgetown can prompt a haemorrhage of rage in many who are disgusted by the lack of it, the results of its prolonged absence.  Now I have some news to share that may surprise citizens, given the substance and thrusts that are embedded.  It is the first time in many years that the drains have been purged, and the fellows did a thorough and commendable job.  I am impressed that the PPP Government has spent the money and delivered.  I go further.

For a while now, the grass has been regularly mowed, and it does something for the ambience of the neighborhood.  Still further, I have come across in my travels across town the hum of machines, and backs bent, in efforts to improve the city, its appearance, and its appeal.  Again, I extend recognition and hand to the PPP Government for its efforts.  His Excellency, President Ali has been involved, and though my thinking is colored on that, the positives are embraced, and I hail him.  Now, as all this discerning and saluting are delivered, I assure everyone that there is a purpose, and it embodies what some may consider as good, but which others would prefer not to hear or read.  The good is taken with the bad, and with a smile too.

I remind all citizens-partisans, patriots, political princes, and peasants-that I have had cause to applaud Minister Vindya Persaud for some early upside.  When some family commitments entered the knowledge base, distancing and some distastes were the only actions left.  Minister Frank Anthony heard accolades (and criticisms) on his management of the COVID-19 crisis.  Also, I got my vaccines and boosters, despite anti-vaxxers, and animosities of others.  Conditional praise was issued for President Ali’s outreach programs.  It is well-known that torrents of condemnation have been poured on the heads of both President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo, a man possessing a dubious honor, where oil is concerned, and corruption is the national culture.  In sum, the good gladdens the heart and it is said and written; while the not so good, the conclusively criminal has also been castigated and called for what it is.

I now change lanes.  When the PNC was in power, I am on record as calling for the resignations or firings of Ministers Felix, Ramjattan, and Yearwood.  It had to do with passport lines on Camp Road, the Camp Street fire, and some convoluted real estate exercises respectively.  When I concluded that the PNC had lost the last elections, I called on then President Granger to concede and do the honorable thing: step away.  The related writings are all in the public domain, and so also are the corrosive and combustible cascades of condemnations that resulted.

There are a few points in all this for my fellow Guyanese and they are of simplicity itself.  It is an individual right to be partisan.  It is another right of consenting citizens to belong to a leadership cult.  It is a right to be a tribalist or a supremacist or an ideologue or a pollster, even a closet racist and a public bigot.  But it is, and can, never be conducive to personal honesty, honor, and integrity to be about what is so corrupted of character that we cannot speak when our own do wrong.  Or we are so constricted in core citizenry that we cannot bring ourselves to write in condemnation when our leaders fail or are devious and dangerous.  Or we are so constipated and contemptible in comportment that we shout about the good, and hide from the atrocities.

This has been the elemental feature of political leaders, and the crooked and twisted that they hold close to their bosom, yet PPP and PNC tribalists, supremacists (even racists) transform themselves into stone, and see, smell and sense none of the evils that abound in this land. When we condone in this manner, we stand as worse perpetrators (wrongdoers and corrupters) than the ones who actually commit them, and are addicted to what is a way of life.  It is beyond mental dishonesty; it is personal homage to dreadful felony.

After all the education, the book of argumentation, the sum of rationalizations and protections, this is what we amount to, then such brethren in this space are not even worthy of interest or engagement, so pitiful they have become, so mindlessness they are. Even the Prophet Mohamed and Jesus Christ came in for resistance and excoriation by their own in their own times.  How come, therefore, there are these Guyanese pretensions of purity and immaculacy when so many political crimes and leadership corruptions proliferate?

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