Oil has embittered and divided Guyana even more

Sep 02, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Former US President Barack Obama rolled backed time to rollout one his sparkling deliveries for the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night. He is always good for a glorious homerun, isn’t he?  “I don’t want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided.”  Me too!  And for the edification of all Guyanese, including President Ali and former president Jagdeo, if my ‘Me too’ cause must be a one-man movement, then let it be.  Candidly, I don’t think that Presidents Ali and Jagdeo have any political use for a Guyana that’s not bitter and divided.  I think that a country that’s not bitter and divided has no value for them, who they are inside. These two less-than-stellar Guyanese top dogs, their surrogates, and the rest of Guyana can interpret what I just placed in the public domain anyhow they wish. But scarcely an opportunity passes without it being seized to deepen the bitterness, wring wider the already yawning divide.  Test 1: when was the last time either Dr. Ali or Dr. Jagdeo spoke anywhere on any issue without a divisive diatribe against the PNC featuring prominently?

National leaders in an era of great new wealth do not connive and deliver what favours a close few, mainly of a particular hue, while distancing from the rest, contemptuously dismissing them to fend for themselves.  I insist that what Drs. Ali and Jagdeo have lavishly doled out to some Guyanese (contractor class, sugar class, corrupt and connected class, among other mostly crooked classes) have wrenched this country farther apart in its season of once unimagined bounties. Those classes are the only ones that benefit immensely from the newfound bonanza.  This is while the bulk of Guyanese of all colours are left running on empty and forced to live in agony.  They scratch out a lousy existence, while favoured neighbours and compatriots live the good life.  I contend that this is the perfect recipe enriched with bitter and divisive ingredients that has become the national stew. So, a great many Guyanese sizzle and simmer at high heat.  Make no mistake: bitter and divided is today’s Guyana.  I assert that rushing belatedly to handout contracts to the Indigenous community is what leaves that population of originals bitter and divided.  Though part of the local political culture, pittances are plasters that paste for a time but don’t represent authentic leadership prowess.  If President Ali doesn’t know that, then I respectfully recommend that he seeks an enhancement of his education at any institution of learning that would help him. Should those doors be shut, then the president should seek his educational improvements from Guyana’s school of life.  There is a world of learning from the daily struggles of Guyanese in that 24/7/366 classroom of instruction.

When the president and Vice President are always inseparably, irreversibly, fixated on the past (more later), what embitters more and divides more, then that Guyana can only be a country that is of the same substances.  To President Obama, I say thanks, bro for that Yo Yo Ma moment of magic in Chicago.  When President and VP can only rail and remind about the PNC, then they are not yet about the soothing and unifying leadership that this country so sorely needs.  How does burning the PNC in daily effigies heal this hurting country, Mr. President, Mr. VP?  Even if (if) the PNC is the sole demonic political presence in Guyana, how does that knit and mend a country that is made up of its blood brothers and sisters?  I invite enlightenment on any smidgen of healing power in what Presidents Ali and Jagdeo have been mainly about.

President Ali has made a precarious living with his clever construction of ‘One Guyana.’  One Guyana for whom, Mr. President?  Certainly, not for Guyanese teachers.  One Guyana made up of what kind of people in the local demographics, Mr. President?  Most definitely, it cannot be for the people of Mocha so callously bulldozed out of their homes, the true reasons for which are now beginning to seep out.  I want one Guyanese to tell this Guyanese how that is knitting and healing and not embittering and dividing.  There is fairness and truth, then there are these calumnies that stand as the inarguable facts of Guyana’s many injustices.  I continue with President Ali a moment longer: One Guyana, I hear loud and clear, sir.  But why not for public servants calling and crying for a livable wage in the richest country in the world?  Why does One Guyana mean the front door for some and the backdoor for most?  How can One Guyana inspire when some citizens are compelled to live on their knees with their hands outstretched.  When there are Guyanese reduced to begging for a fair wage, there is nothing about any One Guyana vision.  It cannot be about oneness.  Because that vision is so blindingly biased it says so much.  Only a certain type of citizen could feel comfortable believing that mantra, what is a sound bite for the gallery of diehards. Bitter and divided, Guyana is.  Next year will prove how intensive, how extensive.

(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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