Political constants: opportunism, ambition or betrayal 

Nov 26, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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…Hard Truths 

A horse, horse!  My kingdom for a horse! (Richard III, Act 5, Scene 4)

By GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News – Richard III was willing to surrender his kingdom for a horse.  He didn’t get his steed in his last desperate hour.

So, he lost his kingdom, and lost his life on the battlefield.  A man of villainy went down in ignominy, as Shakespeare relayed to us in such sublime prose.  They still gleam with a special radiance centuries later.  Today, I look across the political landscape that is Guyana, and contemplate some core features of life, many aspects of it.

What do men who set themselves apart stand for in this country?  What do men who hold themselves out as different are really about deep inside?  What will Guyanese give up, (whether the profound for the perverse, or the sacred for the scandalous) so that they can get what they desire with a dark passion?  Ambition is a passion that brings elevation (first).  Inseparable from that elevation is condemnation and desolation.  History does not forget, sleep does not allow forgetting.

In the throes of the Burnham era, there were those who formed a most vibrant and pivotal social interest group.  For a time, it had muscle and teeth; the challenge was on, then the battle was done.  Perversity overtook principle, a snake replaced the soul.  One man maneuvered, bargained his way to the highest ministerial height.  Stunted and shunted upstairs, the best of sinecures.  He became a political nonentity, enjoying his reward: a pot of soup.  What value the prize, when much is gained, but so much had to be given up.  Some may call that political betrayal.  I content myself with political opportunism or political ambition.  Or both. Ramotar, Rohee, and Ramkarran held for decades; but not Lalbachan nor Vincent, and most of all Ranji.  The first trio held for loyalty and had nothing; the latter moved for personal prosperity.

Ambassadorship and the speakership of the house seem to have a special attraction for a few in Guyana who will barter everything for the big push, the bigger jump to the top. One Guyanese detested his political adversaries with unparalleled vehemence, a particular leader was so despised, only for the man who couldn’t stand the sight and smell of his foe(s) to succumb to the compulsion of ambition.  Lust for position, lust for recognition, has its upside.

There is that long decline also.  The speakership has its 30 pieces of eight.  For there were and are those sons and daughters in the political world of Guyana, who swore to the deepest recesses of heavens that they would never take a single step in the direction of the PPP or PNC. That is, until they did.  Call it what pleases.  Carrots dangled.  Moths drawn to a flame.  Or something craven taking hold and kicking all principle out of a man and into the gutter.  When the gutter rejects, there is always the sewer that never turns away anyone.   All that remind of what some were so loud about before was only posturing.  Who wasn’t made a director, was forced to be propagandiser or apologiser.  They reduced themselves to squatting over the latrines that represent their character, their reputations.  The truth of that text proves its infallibility once again: what profit is it for a man to win the grandest sweepstakes, but remains bankrupt in his soul?  Men lose any claim to an honourable and dignified life, but with a difference.  They lose those while they are living.

Though men dominate, women also joined for their share of political self-enrichment.  It is what the crude and the rude dripping with contempt call political betrayal.  I am comfortable with expectations coming to pass.  In this, there is something to be said.  There is a magnetism about being close to that speakership title in Guyana that make some children of this soil forget the oaths they had taken, commitments made.  They sell party, family, and country for their own ascendancy, political prosperity and its extended rewards.  If the political realm was akin to the judicial one, Guyana’s jails would overflow with perjurers.  It is how Guyanese men and women have betrayed trust.

By my loose, unofficial count, a trio of immortals have crossed that floor, after recoiling in horror from the mere idea of doing so.  What price self-defeating ambition, for a place in the sun?  Some place a premium on shortcuts, only for them to die by a thousand cuts of their own making.  Like death and taxes, there is another constant refrain: nothing is self-serving, nothing is a violation of principle.  It is all and all the time for the benefit of the people.

In this tried and true, truly unique Guyana political formula, the people are made poorer.  On the other side of this bitterest of brews, those who were fighting to make the ordinary people richer are the only ones getting rich.  As a reminder: prime minister, ambassador, speaker, minister.  One special character was so lacking in confidence that he traveled to that farthest of fatal destinations: a place called No Confidence.  It took him all the way to where the sun rises, until a dog bit him and brought him down to the ground.  Then it was back to the jail that he had constructed for himself, which now stands as the four grey barbed wire walls in which Macbeth trapped himself.  There ought to have been a place reserved for such an envoy to reminisce about better times with last week’s illustrious visitor, Mr. Democracy Modi.

Some make public speeches to justify their calumny.  The smarter ones settle for the trance of silence.  Richard III fell by the hand of his foes on the field of battle.  In Guyana, the scheming and skulking fall by their own hand, the weight of their double-cross.

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

(Political constants: opportunism, ambition or betrayal)

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• apologiser, hard truths, kingdom for a horse, propagandiser, sublime prose

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