Is Guyana the house of slaves, national address of those rolling over?

Oct 25, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

---

Kaieteur News – There are large swaths of silence.  There is docility that compels obedience.  There is the piteously passive that feeds into total subservience.  In the richest country per functioning brain, and then some, this is the canvas that captures Guyanese at their foremost, purest substance.  Oil by the oceans, and amidst voracious exploitations by Exxon and company, this is Guyana.  Can Guyana now be confirmed as a house of slaves?

House of slaves, the keen of eye and mind are sure to discern a connection.  This pairing of words in the English Language that started out with intent to slap through the derogatory.  The same marriage of words has grown from derogatory to inflammatory to infamy now.  Politically correct it may be to slide past.  But there is the grinding reality of Guyana, Oil Guyana, that speaks to what the arrival of oil has done to the people of this country at every level.  Nobody speaks, but for a few.

Nobody takes a stand, other than those bold (or foolish) enough to do so.  By force of the grimmest circumstances slaves were forced to do so, live so, weren’t they?  But why should any Guyanese?  Go along to get along?  To sell self as a slave to Exxon for what?  Regrettably, the final strand of liberty loosened on May 26 did not bring an end to slavery.  Not just for Black Guyanese, but all Guyanese minus a hardy few.  Let’s look at ourselves.

In parliament, over half of Guyanese lawmakers stood for what benefited the exploiter Exxon, the new enslaver Exxon, what exposed citizens to possibly mortal economic peril (spill).  It is a sordid half that marches under the flag of the government.  As the current ruling party goes, so do almost half of Guyana’s electorate.  Since the ruling party thrives on being silent and impotent, half of Guyana’s electorate tightly embrace being silent and impotent.  Thus, the foreign raider reigns unchecked, supreme.

To speak out against the American colonizer operating as a contractual partner is the equivalent of treason, with the malevolence that is spawned by such conclusions.  To speak out for more from the oil is to disrupt the PPP Government’s collaborations with Exxon, to stress the ambitions of leaders and the kit and kaboodle making up the broad rear.  To declare against what they themselves had hammered as wrong is to be branded a troublemaker against Guyana interests.  Is that not the mentality of slaves, those who find comfort in a certain residence and address?  Even more notoriously, to point to poor oil governance, and the lack of heart to fight genuine contract battles unleashes the might of the State against those who call for better leadership and effort.  The government record is there, and those who incur its ugly wrath are part of it.  A short trek through African-American history will confirm that when the oppressed rose up, some who served in the Big House on the slave plantations hustled to inform their masters of developments.

Is this not what is happening in today’s oil Guyana, where political grovelers view dissenters and objectors to the Exxon contract as threatening to their standing, undermining their preference status with the oil folks.  So, the political grovelers in Guyana and their cohort of professional brownnosers turn on their own and betray them.

When there is a government openly committed to this slavish state of mind, then the always urgent demand for a viable political opposition soars to the highest rung on the ladder.  Incredibly, when the chatter and layers are cut through, there is not much that differentiates between a weak and pathetic government and an opposition that is just as frail and feeling its way.  When the economics of oil should be the cause and driving force, the politics of oil is what becomes the highest priority.  That is, both government and opposition shamelessly do their damnedest to stay on the good side of the white man, and be assured of enjoying a lengthy and prospering life.  Political, personal, or any other way.  Stated differently, don’t rock the Exxon oil boat, agree to travel on the Exxon love boat, and all is guaranteed.

Thus, the political future of Guyana’s elected leadership is in good hands: assured by Exxon (and America) for the present and future.  Look at the Exxon imposed oil environment with an unjaundiced eye: silence, hairsplitting, tone deafness, walking between raindrops, and bending over backwards, or to shifty points on the compass, as directed by Exxon.  In the realm of politics, those who condemn themselves to the lot of slaves talk with straight faces, deceive with conmen narratives, and all the while partnering with Exxon to feather the company’s nest first.  Then it’s their own as their extra recognition in the Big House that favoured slaves that hold up their end of bargains, justify their existence, abandon their own.  Self-enslaving pushes towards rolling.  Rolling over inspires betraying, selling out one’s own.

Civil society-private, professional, the self-anointed profound and pure-holds fast to the mantra that it is wiser to stoop to get by, get ahead.  Stooping inspires images of stooges, the natural extension of which is towards prostration and kowtowing.  The Chinese knew what it was to kowtow before callous and heinous mandarins.  The pigtails serve as identifiers.  Kowtowing before Exxon should be the most alien thought ever for any Guyanese, when so much needs to be righted, when so many are without, stripped of dreams and dignity.  Only the worst of self-slavers and grovelers could agree without objection to local conditions in this oil mecca.  Is Guyana the house of slaves of every complexion?  Is Guyana the national address of grovelers of every kind?  There is Exxon, there is the Guyana situation, and there is the confirmation.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) 

---

• company, exploitations, Exxon, Guyanese, kaboodle, Oil by the oceans

---