Latest update September 14th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 29, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column
Hard Truths by GHK Lall
Kaieteur News – I encourage every Guyanese to study where this country of ours called Guyana is and settle for whatever soothes their souls. The best and brightest long gone. The moral crater widens and deepens. The ethical swamp stretches forth darkly and endlessly. The bold crumbles without a fight, little of even a genuine flicker sparking with inspiring incendiary streaks. In aggregate, this is where I am about the Guyana that exists, what Guyanese have left as their legacy of a country, a once proud one. No country can become a country when its ethical guardians are among the most unethical. No volume of oil can fuel revitalization, the requisite transformation.
Pick any context, and those that the PPP Government has not bought out before, it buys out today to betray those trusting in them. The context could be the shepherds of religious houses: no backbone, no serene magnificence amid the half-acre of hell that is the Guyana of now. What teachings, what values, what spirit. Or take the labor movement and its leaders: what happened to that militant spirit of yore, that fighting for a farthing extra for thousands of toilers. By what contagion have such bullocks been diseased, state dissipated? Does everybody have their price, flimsy staying power, feeblest grasp on the ropes in a ferocious death struggle, for one last inch. Is this where life has solidified? It is better to congratulate Bharrat Jagdeo and his PPP for having a chest overflowing with booty to share with the frail and frivolous who put on an outward show of manly sturdiness. He doesn’t have a measly 30 pieces of silver to share, but 300 times 30, and can effortlessly extend that 300 to 3000 times 30 for Guyana’s now countless sellers. Confirmation swarms re the roost of betrayers that roam this land in all sizes, genders, colors, and orientations. Ordinary Guyanese now get a glimpse of why I find so many revolting.
With the best and brightest lost, Guyanese could only get the PPP Government they have. And struggle with an opposition that must first carry itself, before it can carry anyone. The boldest and surest gone explains why civil society is so limited numerically, spinally, intestinally. The strongest and most assured left and the professional class withered for want of mental acuity. Last, the private sector whored itself to the sexiest bidder, biggest bankroller, most committed stalker.
In sum, Guyana is one big setup, put-on, come hither, and then the long, huge, hard let down. I see a big farce, where nobody is as he or she appears, and nothing is as it seems. Yes, I wax unapologetically in absolute terms today in this freest expression of my thoughts, this harsh cri de Coeur for a country that has lost its stones, bones, and cojones alongside its fertile soil to bear fighters born in blood and ready to shed it. Why should Maduro fear one Guyanese pretender as being a warrior, one PPP Machiavellian character who has been groomed from the womb to be a man of tricks, a servant to guile, and one well-schooled in the arts of deception? Guyanese have been so treacherous to their own selves that they have little of the traitor’s impulse left in them; all used up. Look at arch imperialist Alistair Routledge and he knows why he smiles so archly.
Check out the most vaunted and venerable house in this land, the National Assembly of the Guyanese people and there is part of the continuum of the stark grimness that stalks this country. Why is there no tone goddamn legal eagle who is fiercely outraged that the supremacy of this nation’s sovereignty lies prostrate because it has been subjugated by the white man’s wiles. Are these proud Guyanese black men and women or paralytic princes? Are there any noble Guyanese Indian men and women who are severely wounded in the spirit by this white gloved slap from lily white hands across the face of every single Guyanese man, woman, and child? Our legal eagles should be screaming above the treetops and at the street level, not slithering around in the lowest grass in efforts to sniff out excuses that rationalizes sanctity of contract when the sacredness of Guyana’s national sovereignty has been besmirched. Eagles don’t slither around in low grass like snakes, they soar with energy and daggers for talons. Considering all this, what has Guyana’s parliament degraded to, if not a slave master’s house? A big, fancy house, where only the crassest kind of colored man and woman are welcomed. Somebody go tell the Americans that I said so. Forget it, since even that is asking too much of these lowdown, stalking, bush wacking cowards that are peers. I will do it myself.
I wait with glee to see who from inside the PPP that Ali and Jagdeo has cobbled together would be dispatched to social media (or any other channel or charnel house) to strike me down for ravishing the virginal innocence of the party and its conjurers. For now, I am not just offending their own tender sensibilities rubbed raw for too long. Now I toy with and terrorize the delicate constitutions of their white friends. Look at all of them: from dummy to PhD, from the malevolent to one hoary monstrosity after another, and there is Guyana writ large: the dregs of a society gone to sleaze, gone to the dogs howling fearfully, and gone to where even denizens of darkness recoil in horror.
What to expect from a country deteriorated to this most self-disrespecting of states? What could be done with it, about it, or for it? What to give to it? Where to begin? Why even bother to care, to begin again? My issue is that no matter how many times I have been pushed to get up from the ground, I somehow find the willingness deep inside to do so and just keep on going. Thus: one seed is planted; some force bigger and better than me comes and takes matters from there to wherever they must lead. There is still hard ground to cover, and determined foes to overcome, so I must go on. If the Fates have determined that it must be alone, then that is what it must be. The choice is not mine to make. Still, the human components in me often wish that there were a few that nucleus of Guyanese on whom one can look with complete confidence, rely on fully, and conclude that all will be well with the world.
(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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