Who’s next, where else the guillotine descends?

Jun 10, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – First, there was the ANC in South Africa.  Forced to check its options, scramble for an alliance to continue.  Then came Modi in India, he of Hindu supremacy, which sounds suspiciously like One India (a Hindu one) where there is over 200 million Muslims made into scapegoats, whipping posts, and reduced to the contempt of “infiltrators.”  Now Modi has his pals, but his hold on power, his visions of unchecked dominance have been brought low. Rather eerily, Adolph Hitler, another master race man, had his visions of a 1000-year reign, only to crumble into ashes and by his own hand.  When will these ‘muddahs’ ever learn?  Modi had history as his tutor and like Ramaphosa in Johannesburg, he didn’t learn one damn thing, other than his enlarged head is now shrunk to size.  If the Indian High Commissioner is offended, I hasten to assure His Excellency that no ill-will is intended.  Just engaging in some free American thinking.

ANC, then Modi, and there is Rishi now poised to get his comeuppance in dear olde England.  The rich and the famous, the foolish and the powerful all laid low.  By circumstances.  By their own overweening hubris.  The gods do have their way.  The Greeks warned, and so did the sacred books.  But who is listening?  In those places in South Africa, Southeast Asia, and northwestern Europe, the bright boys (they are all big, bright, and bad boys) are forced to crawl on their bellies and eat dust.  What is pronounced is that in each of the countries identified, the political opposition never said die, never gave up.  They may not have won in Africa or India, but the victory circle draws nearer, beckons stronger.  Plus, there are different kinds of people housed in those high places, and their many hamlets and homesteads.  They listened to rousing rhetoric and smelled fish.  A week-old fish left untreated in the rain and sun.  Something had to give, for the smell that it gave off.  They had a choice: vote with their feet or vote their passionate loyalty.  The feet had something to do with the kick that Modi and Ramaphosa got.  Imagine that even a man like Jacob Zuma, he of countless corruption claims and cases, could sense a resurgence in his political fortunes.  Talk about rising from the dead, and it is not only Jesus who could lay claim to that miracle.

Guyanese have two of them here, and both in a real country with a real opposition would be numbered among the walking dead.  Politically speaking, of course, before somebody holler foul, and move to shut me down a la the man from Buxton.  One is all moon and stars with his dewy-eyed vision of One Guyana.  Like I said from day one, what is that one of?  In India, it is religion; in Guyana, I have fears of race.  Like Jake, there is a Teflon fella right here, who is slipperier than a greased pig.  Whoever said corruption gets to go through to the next round of Jeopardy.  But the local bigwigs look at 2025 and see clear sailing.  Guyanese could do with some of what India just had: Men against Modi to give these wastrels a boot in the behind and send them tumbling.  But who are they, and where are they in oil soaked and race scarred Guyana?  Man, this country could use a cleanup and I am not speaking of the garbage bag variety.  It is closer to political housekeeping, but there is a huge void: who are the fighters for a new democratic way in Guyana.  It is not me, so let’s put that one to bed for the longest rest.  Too ancient.  Too indifferent.  And too bent a certain way.  What is Guyanese politics if there is no ‘teefin’ and ‘lyin’ and ‘connin’ and corruption?  I would just be out of my depth; they would drop a depth charge on me. It would serve me right for meddling in matters not my business, not what was willed for me in the calling back to this place I call home.  Some home, where the brothers and sisters want to send me to a permanent one in the ground.

So what does that leave as the prospects for this beautiful Guyana of ours, besides the tender mercies of the bluff man and the bumbling, scrambling one?  Any way that I look at these two inspiring figures in the glorious domestic pantheon, I ask the Lord what did I do to deserve this condemnation?  Of having to deal straight up and forthright with these characters right out of Alfred Hitchcock?  One has the build, the other thinks he has the brawn. One fools himself that he has the head; the other has already lost his head, handed it over to Exxon and America in a calabash.  I never thought that “give me your poor, your tired…” could have such wretched individual application, such dreadful national implications. Here is the be all and end all of all of this: this place is ripe for a change, but who, what and where are the alternatives?  More importantly, I scan the horizon, and I am still to see the agents of change.  Any kind for the better. (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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