Alistair Routledge – Never smile with the crocodiles

Oct 13, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths by GHK Lall…

Kaieteur News – A negative note is the starting point.  Carefully pondered.  Deliberately chosen.  Mr. Alistair Routledge and those he represents in Guyana; they are not friends of the Guyanese people.  Partners of some sort, yes; friends, not in a long season of Texas drought.  I look on as Guyana political leaders and their gangs hang around him, hail him, even fear him.  Good for him.  Good for them.

Speaking for myself, there is only one way to deal with a man, a partner, a presence like Alistair Routledge in Guyana.  He is here to conquer and carry away booty, which means two things.  He is a menace to this country.  He is seen as an anathema by me.  To assure everyone, there is nothing emotional in any of this, only what is clinical.  No Guyanese should be so careless, so reckless, as to allow himself to be fooled by that good ole boy charm, even though the syrupy drawl of the American Southwest is missing from his intonations.  Recall that old caution Guyanese, never smile with a crocodile.

When the image of Mr. Routledge comes to mind, I go into a different mode, which is recommended to all four of Guyana’s top political leaders, Messrs. Ali, Jagdeo, Norton, and Hughes.  He must be regarded with the health care as if one is going into one of those old Wild West saloons or coming out of one.  Whether entering or exiting, pause at the door.  Sweep the floor, size up the crowd, for there could be lurking danger in those dark confines, or out on the wide, bright, street.  Studying the lay of the land is to take nothing and no one for granted.  There could be an Alistair Routledge in there or out there.  What the gunfighters of legend, those who lived long enough, did in those sweeping surveys have stood them in good stead.  There could always be a bushwhacker waiting, a two-bit hothead out to prove a point, or those pretending to be friends.  It is the latter group that must be watched most carefully.  From Guyana’s standpoint, that cluster is where an Alistair Routledge type would be.  Guyana and Guyanese have paid a price for repeatedly letting down their guard with Mr. Routledge.  One government did it; another government came in and made a culture of it.  It is why Guyana is where it is.  Recall a few sentences back, I spoke of a crocodile.  Just think of one that hovers placidly, and that is the partner Guyanese have in Exxon.

And who is its chief man of business in these parts.  Executioner and enforcer, he is.  This is the mortal peril with which the leaders of this country toy, play games, and coddle up to in the hope of rising to favored status, this being spared a possibly lethal strike.

Get real Guyanese.  Try this one for size.  In Texas, the worse crime was that of being a cattle thief or a hoss thief, not necessarily in that order.  To remove one is to leave a man to die.  To steal the other is to cut him off from his possible future.

Guyanese aren’t dealing with cattle rustlers or horse thieves in this modern era.  In this 21st century, Guyanese are forced to deal with oil thieves.  What could be said of honour when a contract such as Guyanese live with was tabled, pushed forward, and rushed to conclusion?  What could be said of the ruthless bloodthirstiness that accompanied the product with which Guyanese deal, with a frown on their faces and a heart pulsing with disgust?  Men of American Western lore, with names like John Wesley Hardin and Quantrill, among others, were not as callous and rapacious and possessing of the stone-cold killer instinct as that displayed by the occupying army here.  Those now resident in Texas by way of Indiana and Pennsylvania, the US Supreme Court, and what has been reincarnated today?  Now Mr. Routledge may not be of that illustrious company, but he knows what I am talking about.  He may not be Texan by birth, but he is just as good by adoption.

For the enlightenment of my fellow Guyanese, try another one.  In many schools in the Texas of today, children must recite the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, with a special frill added for good measure.  Right alongside that which came out during the American Civil War, the children must also intone Jefferson Davis’s proclamation giving birth to the Confederacy.  Over 150 years after a bloody Civil War, the passions and visions that launched that conflict still rage unextinguished in the hearts of many Texans, many others.  A fratricidal battle to resolve the issue of liberty and the sanctity of the US Constitution, and that is where Texas is.  Does this signify that Mr. Alistair Routledge is of that mindset?  Of those who are inferior (and backward), hence who are superior?  Of whom must be tolerated for the almighty dollar and corporate profitability?  I think not.  But he is the best man to know where he stands on all that I share so quietly in this national space.  When all this written and digested, there is that contract that stands like some Confederate yoke around the necks of Guyanese.

Thus: my advice to my brothers who prefer to kick and curse me: watch the likes of Mr. Routledge.  Be on alert.  Don’t trust.  Guyanese will be better for it.  When the day is done, that should have been the only objective.

(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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• and Hughes, Jagdeo, leaders, Messrs Ali, Norton

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