Independence Day: who is free, who is enslaved again

May 27, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News –  Free!  Free, at last!  Just to whisper, then shout, that one word with so much grandeur about it, so much of what is sublime.  Free!  It is good to be free.  By the grace of a benevolent God, free.  Guyanese were freed of the colonial yoke on May 26, 1966.  Well, so they believed.  Here is an eye opener after the celebrations were over:  they didn’t know how much they were wrong, could not have been more wrong.

Here we are. Breezing past Janet Jagan and 1999.  Skipping over Ramotar and Granger in 2015 and that date with destiny in October 2016.  It is true that 2016 has only one 6, but it is the mark of the beast from Revelation’s abyss, the devil.  Now, there is Exxon and America and their planes.  They don’t come to take Guyanese rushing to get out of here.  They are bringing Americans hurrying to get here.  In the spirit of a free man, one of the truly free in this country, I say welcome, brothers.  But this is my house, this Guyana, and it must be on my terms.  Talk about terms, and there must be conversation about its bosom companion, conditions.  Those are Exxon’s.  If anyone is still talking about, pretending at, freedom, then the asylum has bed and board for them.  The British sailed away, and the Yankee came right behind them on their winged chariots to take the place of the old colonial masters.  Oil imperialism, US dollar democracy, warplane diplomacy, and to complete the circle Exxon’s recolonization of this hapless land and its inhabitants.

Did someone have the audacity to ask what happened to self-determination and patriotic national leaders?  It is Freedom Day, so I replace audacity with keenness.  It is more than a fair question.  It is an excellent one.  I look around for the President and find Dr. Ali administering his dosage of self-determination: sanctity.  Like someone who just discovered a fresh word, he keeps repeating it; he is that overjoyed with himself.  Sanctity is how he prostrates himself under the boot of the new enslavers.  How he holds out this nation’s hands to be chained, its jewels to be raided.  They did that to Africa and India and Inca, and now it is Guyana again.  How is that freedom?  Who is free?

Certainly not Bharrat Jagdeo.  Not when he and Ali and, to some extent Opposition Leader Norton, have all become outstanding practitioners of tactful diplomacy where Exxon, the new enslaver, is concerned.  Don’t look in the eye.  Don’t stand up as genuine patriotic men.  If Wilberforce and King were cut of the same cloth, slaves would still be slaves, and Black Americans harnessed to Jim Crow.  If Gandhi donned a suit, Indians would still be sucking salt. If Jagan and Burnham were of like docility, the British would still be here, with Americans running their usual rackets behind their sophisticated screens.  Free and fair was one such screen, democracy another.  Who is free and who is fair today?  Look at Jagdeo, and he fancies himself the best English professor around.  This national leader is enslaved from thoughts to tongue to toe.  He is the most glittering example of tactfulness, tending his words carefully, walking and speaking softly.  But only around the white people.  Absorb the energy and boldness of Ali and Jagdeo in unveiling sledgehammers at the teachers in their quest for an extra dollar to live in a dignified manner.  Now, Ali and Jagdeo are going to Court to reverse Justice Sandil Kissoon’s ruling.  For the small Guyanese man and woman, they have nuts.  Before the white man, they have nothing, are nothing.  Except what the new colonizers and enslavers allow them to think, say, and represent.  Guyanese must understand the new slavery. On this 58^thcelebration of Independence, they must appreciate the new slavery, this new colonial-bowing, colonial-shuffling, and colonial-scraping mentality?  Is this not what, when the paddy is sifted, the chaff of Jagdeo that is left?  I say that the impotency of better contract management is the slavery of willing submission to what Exxon enchains Guyanese with, handcuff generations.  Jagdeo doesn’t have the onions to confront Exxon, but he can brawl with the local media, batter Guyanese teachers.  Guyanese need a Nat Turner and Marcus Garvey, a Stokely, and a Malcolm.  They got Bharrat Jagdeo.

In its favour, the Opposition of Norton and Ramjattan took its time, but has shifted its stance in some ways.  Risks and corresponding coverages.  Meters and transparency.  It is a start.  Roysdale Forde, the Young Turk in a hurry, used five telling words recently in the context of oil: IMMEDIATE CHANGES TO THE OIL CONTRACT.  Congratulations, sir.  Don’t do like brother Jagdeo, who prefers to forget what he said about the contract, pretends at amnesia to escape leading the charge against Exxon.  Did somebody say yellow?  I say bloodless also, and an oil contract eunuch.  Even the man who signed the oil contract for Guyana is not so gutless, so loyal to the Exxon enslavers.

Here is where I stand.  Dr. Ali and Jagdeo change course and challenge Routledge and Woods, and I will write symphonies to their names, prowess.  Norton or Forde wage that good fight, that just war, and I will sing their praises.  Any of the four shakes off the shackles of enslaving Exxon, and I swear on this Independence that I will come out and vote for them.  Dig up the bones and ashes of Burnham and Jagan.  A fingernail may be found, only one is needed.  Grab that, for it can help to rise from this contract captivity.  This Independence Day, 58 years past 1966, there is so much from leaders that is regrettable, so little that’s applaudable. (The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)                       

 

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, Justice Sandil Kissoon’s, Ramotar and Granger, Roysdale

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