One for Guyana too

Jun 12, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Mexico just did it with Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor.  Guyana must do so too.  There is no better time than now.  Elect a woman to lead this country.  Somewhere to other than where it is, and with no more of those that it has at this time of great developments.  What is it that Guyana has, has had, and looks likely that it will continue to have?

For one, it has been all men, with one curious exception.  I am forced to say curious because Mrs. Janet Jagan, as president, never really caught on, got settled on her feet, really got going on all cylinders.  I didn’t like the fact that in a country as demographically diverse as Guyana, a naturalised citizen was the best that we could do, and so swiftly after Independence, and the much-hailed return to democracy.  It didn’t strike that way then, and still doesn’t today.

Perhaps, that strange handiwork of President Jagan, which so few ever speak about, was enough to condemn her into a lesser place than she deserves.  Look at what her own political descendants have done to her and her illustrious spouse.  I am thinking of that 1999 deal with the Yanks.  It is enough to last several lifetimes beyond mine.  So much for that blip in the male-dominated seasons of political leadership.  The men were men before in that we had CBJ and LFSB.  Today, to call the men mites would be an insult to those low-level creatures.  Ask for a straight sentence and a straight right to the eye is the favourite response.  Those who have no hair to speak about have no heart.  Those who pretend to have a head on their shoulders open their mouths and prove how empty it is.

Those who have much weigh have no muscle at all.  It is all blubber and blabber.  I think that Guyanese need to take a chance with a woman as the national leader.  I go further: Why not an all-woman party?  And still further: why not an all-female cabinet?  Think of this my fellow travelers (please don’t think along the lines of isms): women are nurturers.  Women are the best of caregivers.  Women are the primary problem solvers.  Check out their homes and their families, and how they do much with the little they have. Women are the supreme teachers. Given a chance, a woman, a school of females could be Guyana’s best leaders ever.   And, since I am allowing myself to get carried away, I say that it the time has come to give the younger women in this country a closer look.  The PPP has one.  The PNC has its own.  I say why not?  Guyanese should think of the possibilities, of what could be… How much of a difference women could make.  I am deadly serious, even though the likelihood of a woman ascending to the top in political Guyana is a bleak prospect. Here is another way that I am thinking which I recommend to every other local: the men in the PPP and PNC have done so poorly, been of such dispiriting qualities, represent such malevolence that the women of Guyana cannot do worse.  Not even if they tried.  Not even those with a well-earned rap for feral instincts and predilections.

Mexicans got their Claudia.  Isn’t time that Guyanese got their Vindya or that outside of outside shots Amanza?  Forget about the other grand character straight out Machiavelli, maybe even Dante Alighieri, who refuses to return what was put in her hand for temporary custody but decided to make it permanent.  Yes, there is that type of cosmetic, or so I hear.  Remember that I am (well, used to be) a betting man.  I will take my chances with a woman to lead us out of the morass and mud and madness (the malignancies also).  And, of course, as all Guyanese should know by now, those are all the work product of the males in the midst.  I urge anyone, and I mean anyone in Guyana, to prove me wrong.  Spare a second or two on any Thursday afternoon, and there is the strangest kind of love song coming out of Freedom House.  Be dedicated and look back a few hours or whenever and there is another exercise in manly futility.  When the manly has converted to regular calumny, then the hour has arrived for Guyana to try the womanly.  Think about it. Give it a try.  Who knows, perhaps that is the remedy that this country needs, has been looking for so long, and always coming up a day late, and short of the right man.  I can see a Guyanese woman leader standing up to Alistair Routledge and the man from Kansas now reigning in Texas and staring them down.  Dare to mess with my Guyanese children!  Let’s see who prevails. Try me and see who will be left standing at the end.  Quite frankly, there are chronic doubts that the men leading the way today can lay claim to any of those family jewels.

(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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• Claudia Sheinbaum, GHK Lall, Great, Guyana, woman

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