Leadership = PPP Govt. style  

Jun 29, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – The world of literature was blown away by Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities.  Guyana is the only country that tries to impress as A Nation with Two Presidents.  When citizens get tired of the buffoonish, there is relief coming in the form of the cartoonish.  It is Sluggo and Boffo all over again.  One character stops just short of blowing up and blowing away those who make his passage difficult, the other comes up with every excuse imaginable to excuse his dereliction of duty, chronic leadership failures.  Think of the former as Daffy Duck with a stick of dynamite, and the latter as Yosemite Sam riding a horse to nowhere.  Man! Are the natives in for a sumptuous political treat.

In the world of today all are excited about the possibilities of wi-fi.  Meanwhile, thanks to what the PPP calls its governance hierarchy, the Guyanese people are forced to live with what is stuck in the dark ages of political hi-fi.  It is the equivalent of having to endure two jukeboxes going at full blast in a small, enclosed space.  Each has its own battlefield lyrics, and both are representative of supercharged efforts to drown Guyanese in a wall of thunderous sound.  It is not Phil Spector, but is this not what Guyanese have been forced to live with, to absorb anyhow they can?

Put two crabs in a barrel and it is a rat race and a catfight.  Put two scorpions in a bottle and the resulting toxins are more potent than formalin and malathion combined.  Yet, what the PPP has delivered to locals is nothing short of the unorthodox and miraculous: two presidents in a packet, and there is no expiry date.  The crisis is that, notwithstanding the helpful label, Guyanese are getting sicker and sicker from being around the two cartoon characters that rule the roost here with and iron hand and a backbone made from elastic and caustic soda.  The twin-headed governing apparatus can thrash and bash dissenting Guyanese deemed to be deniers and deviationists, and rabble rousers and agitators, with the iron hand very visible and tangible.  However, when it must stand up and face up to the characters at Exxon, the PPP leadership elastic backbone stretches like the best of contortionists, while the detergent power of the caustic soda erodes any willpower or courage for the fight that they must wage.

In terms of who can put on the biggest show and make the loudest noise, one head of the two-headed leadership beast is pleased to be a circus ringmaster.  The other is getting better at each outing in the role of a carnival barker.  Come one, come all!  this is the best place to be, the big tent that is One Guyana.  Cecil B. DeMille had his Greatest Show on Earth, but that spectacular takes second place before the extravaganza that the local emperor and his governor put on daily.  One makes the rules and lays out the territory; the other is the enforcer, and with both bulk and brawn to match.  I label it the X-rated version of good governance, Guyana style.  I have long been asking myself how the hell that Guyana can be called a country, when it is nothing but comedy central.  For those who are offended, I extend a peace pipe with the substitute of a raging national lunatic asylum.  How Guyanese have survived so long is more than a mystery without a solution.  It is a mirage that not even the people who live in the Sahara have encountered before.

These are among the machinations that the prince of Guyana’s politics has foisted on Guyanese.  In PPP land, the conviction is of some legendary king taking advantage of the naivete and trust of the simple folks.  Reality has forced me to believe that what Guyanese have succumbed to is not a noble prince of the realm. A jingle from history jogs the memory and I recall not a benevolent prince, but a treacherous princess Dona “La Malinche” Marina who coddled up to the Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes and condemned her people to slavery. Before long, that betrayal led to the ruination and eventual fall of the mighty Aztec Empire.  The rapacious Spanish carted away all the yellow gold.  History does repeat itself, doesn’t it?  For although Guyana cannot lay claim to being an empire, it certainly does have an underwater oil Atlantis.  Black gold is the chic expression that sophisticates favor.  When the oil came, it was not long before Jim Crow also came running to Guyana.  Substitute some local and foreign here and there, and the Guyana connections to what happened to the Aztecs can be made, is now more understood by being lived.

Guyanese need leadership to be in the vanguard of the charge for a better life.  It is not going to happen by leaders making themselves into the poodles of the foreign invaders.  Then, rising full length, to play at being the big local badmen bent on taming the town of dissenters and detractors.  Frankly, the more this PPP leadership combo pretend at being courageous men, the more they come across as whimpering cartoon characters.  I pity them and the spectacle they make of themselves, to Guyana’s loss.

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• Daffy Duck, GHK Lall, Guyana, hard truths, passage

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