Latest update December 25th, 2024 1:10 AM
Aug 06, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column
Kaieteur News – PPP General Secretary and strongman Bharrat Jagdeo is on record saying very boastfully and boisterously that the ‘PPP is the only multiethnic party in Guyana.’ Score one for Guyana’s biggest grandstander and fake political grandmaster. I give jack his jacket, and though Jagdeo has done everything in his power to be hauled away in a straitjacket, the jacket that is due to him (multiethnic) must be given to him, as a matter of principle. It is what is right, what speaks for itself, when compared to his fine fellows in the opposition PNC and AFC camps.
The PNC has its slate of leaders. Frankly, it is that same colour, has the same brittle texture of the tablet on which we used to write. The surging, floating, parading AFC came out with its own board of men with luminous gleams, and it is the same damn thing all over again. A board of leaders to stand for governing multiethnic Guyana. It is my anguished duty to recommend an urgent visit to the optometrist, and while they are it, a consultation with an ophthalmologist and cataract specialist could all be of immense benefit. He who hath ears must hear. He who does not have eyes had better take up another profession in Guyana. The shortsighted and color challenged had better leave the politics to me. Take up yoga dancing or bird watching are my recommendations. Yes, I hear that there is strident opposition to tokenism and other forms of Machiavellianism, and those do have much going for them. But the Cooperative Republic of Guyana is not the United Kingdom. In fact, there is nothing that can be said to be cooperative about it. Check with a watching and absorbing and concluding electorate. Who are these people? How come there is no one that looks like me? There is politics, then there is realpolitik. Tokenism it may be, and even in the PPP. But tokenism has a special fragrance about it that is more seductive than L’oreal and Lancôme put in a glass bottle together. Glass bottle to distinguish from the miracle of a plastic bottle, and just so that all could be on the same page.
Jagdeo showed that he has what it takes to rise to the challenge and master the dark arts of tokenism. Are Aubrey Norton and C.A. Nigel Hughes conceding in the public arena that Jagdeo has gotten the better of them on this one? Are both Mr. Hughes and Mr. Norton silently thundering by their unwillingness, their tone deafness, that they are lesser men, leaders of a lower cast, than Jagdeo is? Though that takes some doing, obviously they have handed that higher ground to him with their slates and boards of pilots and princes to clear the way in the looming elections thickets ahead. Now for a dose of bitter reality that is Guyana’s public racial medicine. There is tokenism, then there are optics. Seeing is believing. Believing is choosing. Choosing gives a chance at winning. Something just don’t ask me what yet.
Guyana’s three political musketeers know what makes the local electorate tick. Tokenism feeds into keeping up appearances. Nobody is fooled, but all and sundry pretend to be recipients of some unknown strain of genius. I will stick to the li’l commonsense that I have. Jagdeo might be the biggest hypocrite in Guyana in this business about multiethnic, but in politics such an attribute is priceless for its attractiveness. On the opposition side, this simple question is dared to be asked, now that I have crossed the color line: are there these few women in political Guyana? Women of pedigree and prowess. Women of grand visions and of ordinary hopes and dreams. I keep trying to insert this little needle into the consciousness of Jagdeo, Norton, and Hughes: for all thy knowing, get some knowing.
Somebody must make sacrifices that matter to the voting public. To the PPP: make the sacrifice of being less corrupt, so that the people can have a glimpse of what is clean governance. To the PNC: cease being so uniform for that is the best proof of what is genuine internal spiritual reform. And if that is not understood, then try this uppercut to the hard skull: make the required sacrifice for the greater good: stop being so black, for a chance to stack up a little. With the dismayed and undecided people who sit on fences and think. With those who have had it up to their eyeballs with the PPP crocodiles and their feasting at the rich table of the people, who are left hungry and wanting. To the AFC: appreciate that impatience and arrogance do not substitute well for ignorance. Make the sacrifice of a few stepping down, biding their turn, so that the group is not made to suffer due to selfishness.
Some parts of this are what killed the PNC and AFC in their 2015-2020 governance interval. Self-help took precedence over self-sacrifice. A pay raise in the early days set the stage for what was to follow. One wise party man had said that properly compensated MPs would resist the tentacles of corruption. Some wise fella he turned out to be. Everybody wants everything for themselves now. My advice may not be exemplary of sagacity, but it has its merits. Astute politicians give the people what they want, so that they can get what they want later. If those are the leadership slates of the PNC and AFC, then they just partitioned Guyana and the minds of Guyanese. Good luck! Good hunting!
(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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