H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Guyana more of conundrum and contradiction, less of a country

Feb 23, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Cast the widest net, and what is hauled in is a sea of contradictions about this country. This polity, this entity that is my country of birth, this Guyana, my most sacred heritage, is a mystery.

There is a president who is more of the loudest leading voice for foreign interests and the whimper of a puppy for the interests of the Guyanese people.  Excellency Ali has company, the local friendship of Alistair Routledge, and the emerging Liam Mallon.  I get the impression that the latter thinks of himself as Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, in this here Guyana.  He cheerily and craftily cultivates the native leadership: world class.  Emperor Ali pronounced that we are “honorable” people, and we “honor” our commitments. Beautifully said, O Divine Master. Yet, it is the same magnificent Ali who has abandoned what honorable men do in upholding collective bargaining agreement executed with teachers.  There is honoring what pleases white folks, but breaching what could uplift black and tan (brown and Amerindian) educators in this country.  Double standards, or just what is plain dishonorable?  Contradiction number one.

Former president Jagdeo, and still president, another potentate of mostly mean disposition, prefers to demonize and criminalise conscientious Guyanese, those he first marginalizes and ostracizes. He is meaner than Maduro to Guyanese who dare to differ with his shallow values, his hollow foundations.  When resource patrimony is the topic, there is Jagdeo: for every hundred words coming out of him, there is half of a five-word sentence with Guyanese in it.  For every hour that he circles with his oil leadership craftsmanship, there is half a minute spared for this country’s citizens.  Barry Jagdeo is awash in blabber and blubber about foreign investors and their returns, but graveyard silent about local inhabitants and their promise unfulfilled, their rewards going a begging. He is fearful of frightening investors, but has no qualms about fouling the hopes of Guyanese.  It is the second contradiction, and it is not good.

There is the opposition that is still searching for vibrant leadership.  Of the kind that Guyanese need most urgently.  One that compels Ali and Barry (and Alistair and Darren) to sit up straight, narrow their eyes, and mop their foreheads. Aubrey Norton has not turned out to be the kind of force that makes the Country Head and Company Head flinch, sweat, and shed their awful hypocrisies, their incorporated contractual bigotries, their tendencies that hemorrhage the hopes of Guyanese.  By any analysis, the opposition in Guyana is content not to be a formidable opposition, but an extension of the PPP Government where this oil wealth is concerned.  The opposition is resigned to being a flea on the back of Exxon, rather than the tail that wags this voracious corporate hound. I say begone, be done, with this cooperation with Exxon.  It pays, or it doesn’t play, it is not allowed to produce.  From the inception, this corporate leviathan has been dishonorable to Guyanese, degrades the spirit of local existence, but always pretends at partnership with Guyanese.  Which respectable opposition would ever consent, desire, to be a part of such corporate deceits that damages the Guyanese population?  I submit contradiction number three.

Exxon itself gushes about the glories of its oil revolution in Guyana.  But Alistair Routledge has Guyanese leaders behaving like Kim Jong Un to their fellow citizens.  Guyanese are reduced to a world of Korean secrecies. North, that is.  This is the democracy that the Yankee arrangers handed to the PPP, which now returns the favor by tiptoeing blindfolded and dumbed-down around Exxon. This is their stewardship of the people’s patrimony.  When they should stand tall, Ali and Barry fall in line, fall flat on their faces.  When he should stand strong, Aubrey walks on the line, as he seeks to save some face.  Guyana has become a proven oil predator’s paradise.  The Guyanese people have been consigned to the lot of pitiable prey.  I count this as the fourth contradiction.  A more microscopic audit would possibly reveal as many as numbers six and seven.

In all my life, I have never heard, read, or experienced national leaders so very unified, so brightly undignified, about what is to the advantage of the other side of the table.  And so pathetic, so anemic in soul and spirit and strength, for what holds a few more cards for their own people.  Not even for a little more.  Not even for the pretense of it, or the shame of an attempt at doing something, even if only for the record.  Where is the burning energy, the tireless effort to grapple with Exxon and let Routledge and Woods know that this is deadly serious? By God! they would have to slander all of us, and every day make pariahs of every one of us.  And when those fail to do the job, then kill some of us.  Look at the broader leadership cohort: they are warriors for Exxon. They are wimps for Guyanese.  Some could pass for Mussolini, others for Napolean, or rabid demagogues like Senator Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump.  Somewhere in Guyana’s political leadership cadre, there is an Adolf.  Which one of those two Germans is the last conundrum? I have lost count of the contradictions that bedevil what is supposed to be a country of red-blooded citizens.  I did discover, though, an army of cold-blooded lizards and lower life forms pretending to take gullible Guyanese to some green pastures that are only mere mirages.

(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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• contradiction, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, less, loudest

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