Richest people in the world, slowest, daftest also

Nov 01, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

…Hard Truths

BY GHK Lall 

(Richest people in the world, slowest, daftest also)

Kaieteur News- All the experts are unanimous.  Guyanese are the richest people in the world.  By that one that most matters: per capita.  Attaching Latin to the description is a nice touch, swells the head with its mystique and exotica.

But being identified as the richest, what does it mean?  That each man, woman, and child-old and young, poor and not so poor-are now in the big leagues, the uppermost stratum of Guyanese society?  Guyanese know by now who that applies to and it is not the commonfolk.

The richest in the world includes pols, for sure, but not peasants.  Padrones in the private sector, but not the mass of the population.  Why then, this empty accolade (averaging aside) that glows globally, yet drops Guyanese to their knees?

On average, Guyanese are the richest.  They are the cleverest also, and the daftest, too.  They forget all the harsh lessons of history; they pretend not to remember the grim circumstances of their ancestors.  I take India.  It was the Crown jewel of the British Empire.

It is not my creation, but a masterpiece of the Victorian era, if not a prior one.  Examine the similarities to Guyana hundreds of years later.  If India was the crown jewel (among many magnificent pearls), then it had to be a land of fable, the greatest one.  It was.  There were the Britishers: with their funny hats called pith helmets, their jodhpurs and breeches, snorting stallions, and either their canes or riding whips, to complete the picture of the towering masters busy at work.  Pardon me, but the picture of a bespoke suited Alistair Routledge surfaces, with his pinned Guyana map on his left lapel serving three purposes.

First, to identify as a partner of sorts.  Second, the suit is a differentiating feature.  And third, the Guyana pin is the subtlest of foreign insults that can be conjured (I own this country, command who I wish, control where I want).  Some Guyanese may protest.  Protest away.  The richest means that the biggest global incentive is present in Guyana, is the greatest lure to check out the possibilities and conquer.  That’s why Routledge and the rest are here.  To seize the riches.  To collaborate with the ambitious, then get them to do the dirty work, their treachery, to their own.

In India, the richest were the maharajahs who feathered their beds at a cheap price: all they had to do was kneel.  Soon, kneeling came easily, an automatic reflex.  If prostration was required in special circumstances of pomp and pageantry, it was done, since matters had progressed that far already.  What are the richest doing in this country to maintain their enriching perches?  Look at the most powerful pols in the domestic arena and there they are: the new Guyanese maharajas: plum on their knees (or face) and proud of it.

How low can a man go for the intoxicant and ambrosia of power?  I urge my fellow Guyanese to check on the way that an addict, any human wreck, on the street abandons every speck of self-respect for a helping hand, even if scornful spittle is part of the humiliating accompaniment.  Humiliation is one of several words that have been scratched out of the dictionary Guyanese use.  Tribalists, partisans, sycophants-all local kowtowing pillars-have discarded personal honor from their thinking.  The maharajahs did it, so those here do so too.  The richest think that they are the smartest and willingly pay any price to maintain that farce and fraud.  If they must kiss (whatever there is to be kissed), then that’s done.  Is this not what is happening here at the highest levels in this country?  With the people who represent the most people, then the next in line?  Guyanese circumstances provide the best answers.  The clearest confirmation and education are had.

Circumstances in India, that most gleaming of precious crown jewels, left another lesson.  Unlike Guyana, it was more spiritual than racial.  Those who toadied up to the British, while they plundered the wealth.  Just like Maharajahs, so did the lower castes and classes and worshipping camps.  In Guyana, the racial is a stone-cold killer.  Every conversation, every contemplation deteriorates into controversy, drops dead even before the floor is touched.  The latest is who is the father of the cash grant idea.  The old one is who is the mother of all of Guyana’s woes.  The richest loves being the dumbest, even the brightest fall into that molasses pot.  The more they try to separate from that swamp, the more the sickening stuff sticks.

The dumbest and brightest have names.  Unlike my name which begins and ends with a consonant, check the vowels in theirs.  There is Guyana’s march past of heroes -political, intelligentsia, and the rest of the rich smart set.  Guyanese are so smart (and so rich) that they refuse to see how daft they appear in the eyes of the exploiter, how craven they are in the minds of the enslaver.  A worst fate could not be had, but it is theirs. With their theories and concepts and spurious, hilarious, advocacies and mental delicacies. The most ignominious racists are those who hate themselves, who gift the other man his smirking superiority.  Perhaps, the vowel enriched people may object, but who gives a flying whatever.

Summation: the demands for the honor of being called the richest in the world are just too pricey for me.  To be the richest by computation but, in reality, the sickest and the dumbest, is not worth one speck of my sacred self-respect.  Those who crave this poisoned chalice (the richest) can have it.  The man is watching, waiting.

(Richest people in the world, slowest, daftest also)

---

• Alistair Routledge, Crown Jewel, India, unanimous, Victorian era

---