Frauds and hypocrites

Jun 17, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I am listening, reading, and observing all these pathological frauds and hypocrites of Guyana suddenly bending over backwards to prove how straight they are. It is an exhibition of how serious they are taking the developments out of the US Department of the Treasury OFAC bombshell. A ticking timebomb, I would say, one with a short fuse flickering ominously; but not a bombshell, since anyone could have seen something like this coming. All the big-shots in the PPP Government who were laughing at what they called ghosts now see God.

There will be penalties and levies and changes. Hear, hear! The leading political jokers have gone wild. They are a study in sanctimony. There will be tightening up and taking care of business. Why only now, sirs? Why not before, when the groundwork was laid? It was the big kahuna himself who came in and capsized the boat.

Out with inhibitions, in with incentives. It is strange the directions to which the incentives led. Crack the whip and keep a steady ship, and they would have protected both themselves and their lavishly generous friends. But hubris is a disabling thing, as many men who didn’t listen, were too full of hot air and lard, found out to their dismay. But no, the floodgates had to be opened and an army marched on uninhibited.

Let me share this with all Guyanese who care: the Americans have a dossier on every single Guyanese, from mule to mastermind in this tiny country. They have a handle on the PPP Government people who claim to be clean but are corrupt to their cores. They know the businesspeople who are about different kinds of businesses, all mostly dirty. And they have the measure of the people who pretend to be righteous citizens but are as rancid as any fruitcake left to the rodents and roaches too long.

Interesting how ruthless the PPP brass is when their own self-preservation is in the balance. They abandon their own, leaving them to the tender mercies of their pursuers. One big one goes to another continent and is what Guyanese call ‘skin teeth’, and this is while almost half the Guyanese people do not have enough to eat.

But he is into big business and is having the time of his life. If ever there was a confirmed jester in this country, there is the poster child of all that is wrong with Guyana. Another one whose claim to fame is brawling to camouflage his blubbering, and making a bigger spectacle of himself on each occasion that something comes out of his mouth.

Termites tumble out from between his teeth, infest his tongue and tonsils, and this character straight of a Gothic tale insists that those termites are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Is this a country of imbeciles or one of intellectuals? Is this a society blessed with inspiring people of power and grace or is it one cursed by the ignorant and invidious that sell the people down the drain for a penny or a pint of rum.

Look at the PPP and the conversion that its ranking people have undergone overnight. All of them are now holy men taking vows. To do what is right. To toe the Yankee line and walk on that straight line and speak with a straight tongue, and not with the forked one of before.

I am warning from now. They are all playing a game. The Guyanese in charge are waiting for the ill American winds to blow over or calm down. The ones who had to be made into examples, well that’s too bad. Collateral damage is life’s balancing act. There will be regrouping inside the PPP and rearranging of practices to keep the party and its leading lights happy. They are simply too greedy and far gone to stay straight too long.

Like a drunken bum burdened with multiple addictions, or some social derelict weighed down by his crippling weaknesses, there are those with long association inside the PPP (or local politics) who just don’t know better anymore.

In a much harsher connection with reality, they don’t want to do better, or in the rare event that there is honest desire, they no longer have the capability to change. The fast dollar and the dirty practice are what consumes them. If they were to try to change, maybe even dare to think of changing, the odds are great that they would get sick.

This is how deeply the chronic diseases of underhanded ways have deformed their existence. Think of it this way: the lecherous in the government and ruling party see a dollar, and it is the equivalent of most of them seeing a woman or a young citizen and they drool about how they can get their hands around that object.

The Americans did not become a world power and stayed one so long by being stupid. They know when they are being appeased. They know when all the right things are being said by the leading people, so that foul features on the front pages will recede in the swiftest time to the edges of attention. It is part of the old political dance, the artificial temporary embrace of rules and regulations to help to inch away from the net that could ensnare. Then, it is back to the big binges, bad ways, and bad days.

(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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• frauds, Hard Truths by GHK Lall, Hypocrites, PPP Govt.

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