Congratulations are in order

Jun 08, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I owe a few words of congratulations to His Excellency, President Irfaan Ali.  He has a considerably stronger constitution than me.  He is the headman over a party Central Committee that has more than its share of serial lawbreakers.  Even when whittled down to the PPP’s family jewels, the Executive Committee, the felonious are still in conspicuous attendance.  Not all of them from the bigger Central Committee body, but enough to bring pondering about what kind of party this is, what quality of government it could offer, and what type of country Guyanese could have.  It takes a special man, an extraordinary leader, to be near such a group without wearing a mask, as though the pandemic was still present.  But a near epidemic he has in his band of brothers, and not a few stalwart sisters.

I look at the Cabinet and I see a handful of wrongdoers.  Remember that one about one bad onion and the whole joint suffers from an unbearable stench.  Like ah said earlier, President Ali has a strong stomach, notwithstanding his own brushes that have been airbrushed out of existence by a noble sibling of the law.  They call that sweeping under the carpet, and the president has his work cut out in keeping the carpet in place, given all those parasites underneath.  He carries lots of weight, and he has shown that he is prepared to carry all the freight.  My gawd! One man didn’t object, and he is injected into a jail cell with bars now beamed to all the world.  I couldn’t help but remembering the Irish actor, James Cagney, and his portrayal of Warner Bros “The Public Enemy.”  Except that in the case of the newest Guyanese jailbird, the name is closer to Dutch than Irish.  I refer to this, because I observe one man being thrown into jail, and in effect being criminalized, with the polce being mobilized, while known PPP criminals cavort openly on Guyana’s stage in their best imitations of Lady Gaga and Madonna.

What does President Ali, doctor and philosopher of law, have to say about that, I wonder?  What about the other man of the law, the majestic Mohabir, what breathtaking wisdom and acumen does he have to spare for poor Guyanese who could use a droplet from his vast reservoirs of knowledge, of legal profoundness?  The president and the Attorney General of Guyana must eat nails for breakfast cereal and barbwire as part of their dinner banquets to sit in session with some of the odious characters by their elbows.  Beside the gastric systems of these political noblemen of Guyana, their respiratory apparatus must be made of asbestos.  For being able to breathe the same air alongside a smattering of their comrades, and not get sick all the way to their shoes.  A li’l land breeze pass in my vicinity, and it is flu and hay fever season.  ‘Is a good ting ah duz stay away from politics’.  Can anybody from anywhere imagine me rubbing shoulders with the hairless ones, the feral ones, the tangled up ones, the specially oriented ones, and the crime-infested ones in the PPP?

Is this a country or a criminal conspiracy that unleashes an uninterrupted crime wave?  Is this a government or a gang of gangsters masquerading as Robin Hoods, just like John Gotti and Pablo Escobar did in Howard Beach, Queens, and Medelin, Columbia respectively?  Is this Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party of ideological and some moral and ethical purity, or a party now overwhelmed by chronic putridity and a runaway criminal culture?  If I return to America, there is a returning Donald Trump waiting to deal with people who look like me and sound like me.  Remember, I am from oil rich Guyana, and not from medieval Appalachia.  My choice is unpalatable: stay among the crime-ridden or suck it up and stick by a man driven by paranoia, dementia, schizophrenia, and every mania known to man.  I guess I will take my chances with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  The process of growing a beard has started, and I am getting a proper turban fitted.

Is this what Guyana has come to, the depths to which its political and leadership depravities driven it?  All this wealth, and all these homeys and honeys flocking around like vultures on the prowl.  Some are furriners, many are local.  What a cast of characters, straight out of one of those Gothic horrors from Hammer Productions.  Need Hannibal Lector, then just peek into the PPP Cabinet.  Looking for Freddy Kreuger or a Nightmare on Elm Street?  Just take a walk down Robb Street (close to Stabroek News), then Carmichael Street, and finally the old New Garden Street for the entrances.  If it is not a den of thieves, it is the predators having a ball.  Authors James B. Stewart and Connie Bruck ain’t seen nothing yet, nor written of any such people like we have here in the gold coast that is Guyana.  I was there.  I knew some of them.  Just like the big ones here, the Yankee ones were full of sewage, and with sweet syntax to match.

Everyone tells me to get with the programme or get going.  Taliban, here I come.

(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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• Central Committee, GHK Lall, His Excellency, President Irfaan Ali, serial

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