H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – National Leadership: Parrots, Puppets, Primitives

Jun 07, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Shame and pain sweep over me in waves.  It is the worst sickness for the people of a country, when national leaders across the board, and without exception, have transformed into the grotesque, the distorted, and the pitiful right before the eyes.  By their own hands, through their own words, they have mutated into self-made caricatures and effigies of themselves.  I contend that there is no greater resource curse than what is unfolding in the bright light of day before disaster prone Guyanese, before a laughing world.  Disaster prone for Guyanese who never get an even break, in the parade of leaders that have lost their grip on reality, distance from where their first duty lies, on what straight talk is about.  The world laughs because it absorbs the circus of national leaders twisting themselves into barbed wire, but ending up as limp, soggy, worm-infested noodles.

One leader has lost any vestiges of self-respect that he may have had.  The explanations he offers, the excuses he makes, the vacillations and obfuscations in which he engages, hold him aloft for the whole world to mock and markas contemptible.  When there are public presentations on issues of substance, at least have the dignity to articulate what possesses some elements of logic, of reason, off fraternity with honesty and reality.  No man, no leader, could be so lacking in self-regard, so porous and impoverished where principle is concerned, that any bilge, any verbal garbage, can be delivered, so shamelessly.  As assessed by any listener, any thinker, any follower, what is verbalized in advocacy is so luscious in the camouflage of vagabondage, so devoid of floors of truth and walls of a profound leadership ethos, that cringing comes from what crumbles at the merest gaze.

Interpretation is not called for, for there is nothing to interpret.  If there isn’t dirty dealing, there is double dealing.  When the shortest of straight lines is required, there are oral circles tangled in ovals and spheres.  Spheres of decay, of darkness, of what is diabolically clever. So putrid leadership has become, that simple questions, honest opinions, unleash secretive henchmen to assassinate the character of women and men found objectionable. Ergo, Guyanese live with the ethically derelict, the nationally dilapidated.

Another leader decided that silence is virtuous, and that absence and distance are the best recommendations in challenging circumstances of the broadest, deepest import.  One leader is heard and makes an utter fool of himself, each time he opens his mouth; the other is wiser, keeps his mouth closed, since he has nothing of significance to offer.  Guilt by omission.  Then, there is crime by association.  This is what the poor, the trusting, the dependent, and the vulnerable of Guyana get for their votes.  Betrayals by bonding tightly with those who build bastions of prosperity for themselves from the richness of the voters’ patrimony.  Thus, the legacy is squandered, the endowment bartered, because of leaders who lack the essential character traits to be of anything that approaches simple, basic honesty.  When Guyanese were yearning for, and seeking, transformational leadership, this is what resulted.  There is transformational leadership, but certainly not of the principled and patriotic kind, and definitely not by the side of citizens, the people who put them where they are and rely upon them to stand on their behalf.  It is a repugnance, isn’t it?  There all are in the sum of their substances.

Still another leader at the national heights can’t find his feet, can’t find what he stands for, can’t find the direction toward which he must venture, make his own defining attribute.  What have the foreigners done to our brothers?  Make no mistake, they are mine, which is why I still have it in me to be concerned about the blinding spectacles they make of themselves. For what, the favor of the covetous foreigner, the rapacious exploiter, the contemptuous divider and arbitrator and decider of our destiny?  This is what governing and governance have come to in Guyana: dependent on the caprices of outsiders, and the calculations of locals.  Somewhere nearby, there are some people who once had hope and some smidgen of confidence.  Today they start the day with their perennial disappointments.

I think it is time that we run these racists and corporate supremacists back to China and America, and wherever else they come from with a smile on their face and a brace of daggers in their hands.  It was Muammar Gaddafi who said, we have existed for thousands of years, and we will manage.  Ours have only been for not even a couple of hundred, and already our knees turn to jelly, and our guts are gone.  When our national leadership character turned into ashes, it incinerated knees and guts and spine and mind along with it.  And the Guyanese people, too.

If this is what the national patrimony represents, then grass and leaves and mud possess infinitely greater appeal and attraction.  What more of the staggeringly stupefying will our leaders deliver to Guyanese?  Crying shame and wounding grievances are now endless in the accursed leadership baseness abounding. Who is not traitorous is treacherous. A hard reckoning is inevitable.

(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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• GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, Parrots, Primitives, Puppets

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