Is this what Guyana has become, independence signifies?

Jun 02, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Today, a week after Guyana observed, some would say celebrated, its 58^th birthday as an independent country, I have only questions to put before my fellow citizens.  There is zero intention of provoking controversy.  The objective is to make us think as patriots, as a supposedly free people, as a polity that determines its own cherished destiny.  The idea is to halt for a long second the uninterrupted quarreling, the rowdiness that now stains our conversations, hurts our relationships, drains our neighbourliness to one another.  I may not get very far, or advance one inch at all, but there could never be any failure placed on my head for not doing my duty to country.

What do we have as our foremost sacred right (and obligation) when there is a reality hanging like a monster over this nation’s head that is of greater sacred value, as claimed by friends and upheld by those who recommend them as friends?  A man next door insists that he has a sacred right to our territory, and most, if not every single Guyanese, are enraged.  It baffles, therefore, that there is not the same level of unhappiness and outrage when there are others who are being given the freest pathway to do what he harbors in his head and plans.  Where is that same, if not greater, anger, when partners are doing so via a different format under supposedly unbreachable legal cover?

We celebrated 58 years of freedom from the tyranny of the mother country, a monarch and her ministers in the government machinery that subjugated colored people the world over to their will and for their own benefit.  What could be said of the genuineness of our national Independence when our own national destiny is not determined by us, but by others?  Why the willing submission to others who stand as the new tyrants of our times?  If we cannot lay claim to every element involved in national self-determination, then what is there left to assert about the self-determination that is ostensibly ours on paper?  What could be seen in a date that has lost its meaning, since it now means nothing?  What is the nature of the independence of this country when we cannot stretch to our fullest height and contend to the death, that independence means that we are beholden to no man, no entity, no sanctity, other than what is sacred to us?  That is, what is in our hands to decide for ourselves, what we will fight for, and what we will never relinquish to anyone?  If we cannot determine our own destiny, then what is Guyana, how can it be said to be a country?

Why should there be surrendering to a foreign instrument that curtails our thinking, hobbles our elected heads, neutralizes our powers, denudes our sovereignty, and damns us to decades of slavery?  How can be term ourselves a sovereign nation, a proud sovereign people, when there is willing yielding, without the fiercest struggle, to what ties head and hands and feet into generational captivity?  Have we no shame to back what we claim as our rightful standing as men and women, and our place to be among them?  Have we no self-respect, not one iota of dignity left?  When we hoist our flag aloft, salute it, do we fail to remember that there is a bigger banner that broadcasts its control over our minds and our movements to do something to free ourselves, while we raise the rafters with ringing declarations of how independent we are?

We have a circumstance that hollows out our supreme lawmaking body, the national Assembly of the Guyanese people, into an irrelevance, so of what value is it to us?  When there is a document that renders any law that is made by our legislators that dares to tamper with what is sacrosanct to others, to no law, then why even have such a body?  Why maintain this charade about independence and having the fullest control of the quality and urgency of Guyana’s destiny?  Why, my fellow citizens, when on the matter that is of the most superior contribution to whether we rise, or stay where we are, as a people, is beyond our control?  When I am subject to the dictates of another man, and whatever his manipulations are, then how I can claim freedom?  When my seniors kneel to the commands of others, then how can I still say that there are no conquerors in our midst?  When every farcical excuse is made to justify subservience to what harnesses this nation, then how can we say that no foreign colossus controls our existence?

How we yield!  How we bankrupt national dreams, individual hopes! How those of our own in whom so much have been placed in their hands, have lost the will and the skill to lead the charge for hopeful Guyanese!  Then the last question that I ask is where are the patriots, and who are our warriors for this biggest of fights, this noblest of causes?  If that is Independence, then I shall bow to dependence.  If what we have is national liberty, then I scorn it.  If this is what is held as the imperative of national self-determination, then gift it to someone else.  And if the lot of this make-believe independent country is for a destiny imposed on it by enslavers, then it is better to fall from being struck from my feet than live on my knees with this disgrace.  Guyanese should take a good, long look at themselves.

(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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