Hard Truths by GHK Lall - Fellow Guyanese - Take Stock, Or Become Part of The Animal Stock

Hard Truths by GHK Lall – Fellow Guyanese – Take Stock, Or Become Part of The Animal Stock

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

Kaieteur News – On this the early eve of Emancipation, that great liberation by Abraham Lincoln’s hand, and the efforts of other noble white men like Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce, I make an urgent appeal to my fellow Guyanese. Not one citizen is excluded. Take stock, brothers and sisters. Take stock of where matters stand, and where they leave. Take stock, and decide if the prospects are of stacking up well, or being condemned to the life of livestock. In America, where all men are born equal and with inalienable rights, there were those who were 60 percent human. Almost 200 years later, Guyanese must decide if they even amount to that 60% bar that damned so many to a beastly existence. Those had the sinews of labour; we have the sweet strength of deep-sea crude. In both instances, the common denominator is slavery, the boot of the conqueror, the batteries of the conquered.

GHK Lall

I look at Exxon today, and it says, like the slave owners of yore, that it is the best thing that ever happened to Guyanese. Look at how happy and contented the people are. Exxon is nothing if not diabolically devious, a corporate desperado of outstanding deceptiveness. Though the words of its talking heads have been reviewed and refined, filtered and finessed, they confirm one irrefutable fact: This American behemoth, this slavedriver from the old American South, is not a partner in any true sense of the word; it is an exploiter, a conqueror, and a plunderer. He who hath eyes let him see. Those who have ears had better get some quick understanding.

Exxon can be our friend, but its people prefer their culture of rabid rapacity. Exxon is greedy for other people’s property. It is that of Guyanese. Fellow Guyanese, these invaders have kicked this country around, and not satisfied with that, the captains of commerce at Exxon have recruited our tribal political leaders to kick their own people around. Stand up Guyanese, and see these people for selves, see through them, see their schemes and their dreadful sicknesses. Money. Profit. More profit. If it has to be from the blood of the Guyanese people, then that collateral flow is what has to be. These foreigners are ruthless, savage in their heinous ambitions, unrestrained in their ghastly predations. The sordid history is there. If Guyanese don’t get up and get for themselves, then they will be gotten and eaten up alive. One gives thanks to Guyana for boosting bottom line. Give some royalty percentage points, give some relief from possible loan shark interest rates, give what really gives Guyanese the billions that rightly belong to them.

Guyanese need to come to their senses. Mr. Alistair Routledge is not the benign godfather that he makes himself out to be. Exxon first came to Guyana for oil, and then it came for Guyanese. Next, it will come for the children of Guyanese to feed its insatiable lust for this nation’s patrimony. To my total shame and regret, I observe my fellow Guyanese at the top of the local tribal clans, and I behold men reduced to fawners, snivelers, and crawlers. When my leaders are diminished to the ranks of pontificators, and 99-cents store Santa(s), then I cringe at the outrage. Because their degradation is my degradation. I discern that greed could be a major contributory factor, but I say that what they have become just should not be. I am insulted, when my leaders have been pushed so low by Exxon that when they leave a room, they leave not through the door, but under it.

The talk has been about a day of standstill. I believe that this country is better served by a day of rage. Quiet, but all-consuming, rage. Steady rage at Exxon for its self-enriching machinations. Nonthreatening rage at national political leaders for their double dealing. Soft rage at one leader who is proud to be Dr. Misinformation, and another who has fallen in love with being Dr. Disinformation. For too long, Guyanese have sat complacently around their stools, on their bridges, and near their fences. Forever, it seems, Guyanese have gone too gently into the long night from days now visited by the shadows of longer, deeper, miseries. Now is the hour that each and every citizen of this country, from haves to have nots, must rage against the dying of the light. The world runs to the light that is Guyana. They find the savaging irony of the richest people in the world on all fours, like some low beast of the field, some serpentine and self-detesting creature.

In parting, a Chinese astrophysicist, Fang Lizhi, comes to mind. Those who are tutored by life’s passage have walked the crucible of grueling tests, have a duty to contribute to the creation of authentic civil society; be in the vanguard of the fight for democracy. Guyanese can take that to heart, or continue to let their hearts be smothered by voracious pillagers. Last, it was the Soviet man of steel, Andrei Sakharov, who said, “The future can be wonderful. Or it may not be at all. That depends on us.”

(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.)