Not you, sir, not now, not ever

Nov 02, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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…Hard Truths

By GHK Lall

 Kaieteur News – His Excellency President Dr. Irfaan Ali may be happy doing the honours.  Doesn’t matter to me.  Vice President, Dr. Bhar-rat Jagdeo could be so far gone with this that it is now his natural reflex.  I could care less.  All Guyana-PPP, PNC, AFC Guyana-could all feel privileged to stand and salute.  Just don’t count me in that crowd.  To Mr. Alistair Routledge President of Exxon Guyana, this is my position, these are my words: You are not my king.  Never was.  Never will be.  Not now, not ever.  To set the record straight, I am not Australian.  I am Guyanese.  One unlike all the little brown and black and other brothers running around and curtsying before the man from Exxon.

No disrespect is intended to Mr. Routledge.  It’s just a statement of fact, the representation of a deep visceral and psychic conviction.  The Exxon Guyana President may be hailed and heralded as a king by many Guyanese, but he is just a man to me, an ordinary American who is an extraordinary pillager.  The English use to honour their brigands and thieves with knighthoods, thus, piracy on the high seas was rewarded, and assorted banditry on land elevated to a special place of honour in the annals of the British Empire.  Leading the honour roll were such illustrious sons of that fabled realm as Sir Francis Drake (the dice man) and Sir Walter Raleigh (a man prone to setting himself on fire).  They were among the heroes of yore, force-fed to impressionable minds in their early days.  It was said that the sun didn’t set on the empire, but what was not said was that an insidious and covetous light did shine on it.  From English heroes, Guyanese now absorb the abominable and the unpalatable: the latest American heroes.

The now departed Excellency Sarah Ann Lynch (remember her?) was a warrior for the cause of Exxon and America in that same order.  After all, what is good for Exxon is good for America.  Droves of Guyanese used to worship her, spread their shirts and children’s comforters for her to walk over the puddles that line Georgetown.  It took them a while to realize the fools that they had been (that she made of them), and what Excellency Lynch’s foremost priorities were.  Those had nothing that sounded like, or was spelt, Guyanese in her diary of considerations.  Today, there is a new American hero.  I erred, a new American superhero.  Today, there is Alistair Routledge.  It is fitting: a superhero from a company that is a virtual superpower.  I pity my brother President Ali, who really ought to have known better.  One doesn’t need an arsenal of high-tech ballistic missiles to deal with the likes of Routledge and the rest.  All that is needed is that greatest of weapons, that most unbeatable of weapons: the will.  The power of an indomitable will, the kind of will that stands up to assembled armies and their endless array of firepower.

In North Vietnam, a man by the name of Ho Chi Minh did so.  Centuries before him, there was a Black man, a Haitian, who did just so.  His name was Toussiant L’Ouverture.  Guyanese who desire to make Alistair Routledge their king and decorate him with the proper levels of awe are free to do so.  Make him emperor.  Grant him the status of an honorary lifetime national presidency.  Don’t make me laugh, for the man Routledge is the real thing from the day he arrived here.  Nothing but a swaggering monarch.  More in the mold of King John before he was cornered and the magna carta squeezed out of him.  The English noblemen had the courage to stand up to their abuser and tormentor, with their country a much better place for it since.  Where are the Guyanese yeomen facing off before their King Alistair and making him offers that he can’t refuse?  Oil continues to be loaded on the boats and more money comes to Guyana, or the next midnight flight out of Guyana on American Airlines?  It is time that I cut through any veneer of politeness: to hell with this damnable superpower stuff.  It is time that Guyana’s leaders and the Guyanese people tell themselves that they are kings of their oil, and kings of their own destiny or they had better prepare to continue to be the sweet queens of Exxon.  Every citizen of this country should be familiar with the use of the word ‘sweet’ in that particular context.

King Alistair was put on his throne by people like Ali, Jagdeo, and Nandlall.  Every time they open their mouths, it is to coronate him.  When they try all kinds of verbal and social media tricks to suppress outspoken Guyanese who are outraged over the plunder of the nation’s wealth, they are bowing to King Alistair’s commands.  Those don’t have to be documented, nor even spoken.  On each occasion that they surrender to what they once scorned (the contract), King Alistair’s crown and scepter are more firmly in place.  All that is needed is a marching band.  There is one at the Office of the President and a cheerleading squad in the PPP General Secretary’s chambers.  Alistair Routledge could be their king.  He is nothing to me.

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

(Not you, sir, not now, not ever)

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