An upside-down country

Sep 29, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall…

Kaieteur News – The first Hard Truth is that Guyana is an upside-down country.  Here is a society that qualifies for recognition as an Alice in Wonderland society.  What should be this way is another; and what should be nowhere in sight is very much present.  An attempt is made to sift through the sawdust and paddy dust, and there surfaces all that is topsy-turvy in the merry-go-round world that is lovely, sunny Oil Guyana.  Is this a place of substance?  Or is it one largely a product of the imagination, or some result of troubled and lingering anticipation?  It is the choice Guyanese must make, as they take stock again of where they are and where they want to go or think that they should go.  Where to start?  The perfect place just materialized, and it is not a mirage.

The recommendation is that Guyanese pay close attention to their fellow Guyanese.  The large foreign contingent, especially the more newly arrived, are kindly asked to pause for a short moment from their greed-fueled profiteering and study the natives.  In Guyanese parlance, citizens are gently pressing their hand on their foreheads, repeat the same under their chins, across their necks.  There is the hint of a temperature; with many signs of things warming up.  That could only mean one thing: it is elections season, and the temperature is beginning to build.  It is a different kind of feverishness, one that drives into a frenzy and the usual long stretches of the hallucinatory.  The last time it was spreadsheets.  This time it could be UVOs.  No!  Not artificial insemination, but the artificial insertion of Unidentified Venezuelan Objects into the domestic elections’ atmosphere.

A turbulent time is promised for one and all.  Nicolás Maduro does have his uses.  The reverse nature of things in Guyana is never starker, when elections are in the air, in the head and, well, as an inseparable toilet companion too.  For every number two, there could be two dozen Venezuelans.  Numbers, numbers, numbers, and they are more sophisticated than those crude old spreadsheet ones.  The contradiction, and it is a nationally glaring one, distils to one place.  The bulk of Guyanese are a picture of apathy and timidity about what the grand promise of their gigantic patrimony represents, but are inspired to frenzy by elections, which affords them the opportunity to select the lesser evil.  Is that democracy or what?  Is that prosperity or not?  Whatever it is, there is the mob-like energy generated by elections now slowly building from its current lukewarm temperature to white-hot intensity.  Political perversity (from all sides) with the national patrimony and Guyanese kicking each other out of the elections line to give one or the other hegemony over the promised prosperity that only goes to the favoured few.  Go figure, somebody.

The intelligentsia (or what masquerades as it) overflows with numbers and references to names that burnish their standing.  These people do know something.  It is part of the numbness and, must be said, the dumbness of their thinking.  Except that it is not so dumb.  If it is not for the ego, it is for the money.  On the rare occasions in this devious Guyanese environment that it is for neither, then it is that deep-seated, pervasive bigotry that has blown this country apart.  The intelligentsia can quote and emote at will, but are all about personal prosperity, and nothing about what is best for a country that has lost its footing.  Those who railed against slavery (and indentureship) are now for bosom fellowship with the new enslavers, the new pillagers.  What happened to their minds?  Sold for a pile of dough?  The truth must be told.  In this backward, facedown country, the only corruption that counts are that of elections.  Guyanese would do well to learn from the Sri Lankans: democracy doesn’t end when elections are over.  No sirree, Barry.

The president and his princes (no slurs about panjandrums and perverts today) shine brightly about accountability.  Unlike Sir Galahad of Knights of the Round Table fame, Ali and his band of partners (please don’t cause any trouble by asking for a number) did find the Holy Grail on the accountability score that is claimed so, ah, rapturously.  The Holy Grail re the best accountability is the one that is a mystery, and about which the clearest answers are wrapped in deep secrecy.  In the world of the Master of Accountability, Excellency Ali, transparency is like a GPL transmission line: antiquated and failing to deliver on what is promised.  It was God himself, who said, “Let there be light.”  The PPP Government said that light would be a blight on its action.  In the rigmarole estate of Guyana, the people live in total darkness, which is celebrated.  This is about government secrets, not GPL darkness.  Where are the Turks, young or old, when Guyanese need them?

The government’s remedy when Guyanese are hungry is to feed them statistics.  This pretty index, that shapely index, is showered so much on the starving in Guyana that they develop a complex: they are hungry no more.  No wonder supermarket profits are down.  There should be no misunderstanding now regarding why Guyana is the best example of a country that is upside-down.  Only four areas were highlighted, there are four dozens more.

(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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• Barry, Go figure, Indentureship, Recognition, sirree, Somebody, UVOs

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