2024 – more reflections

Jan 07, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- I begin 2025 by reflecting on 2024.  It helps with readying for 2025, whatever it brings.  Whatever it holds.

The lines started queuing from early November.  As the days marched inexorably towards December, lines lengthened, tightened.  Try moving.  Dare to think of parking.  It was not just to get into GT from the East Bank or East Coast, but from the west side also.  Sundays brought no letup.  I am thinking that all the vehicles in the region (CARICOM) are in Guyana.  The four issues (heat, cost of living, politics and wealth) that occupy Guyanese minds lost the sweat of the first when the rains arrived.  Traffic snarls and woes replaced.  But something curious was happening.  Despite all the traffic, the cash registers in stores were not ringing richly.  Walk into a store and the cashier is waiting, no lines.  What does that say?  It says a few things to me.

First, ordinary Guyanese don’t have money.  Second, those who have to spare saving for hard times.  Third, those who collected the cash grant used it to clear debts, or banked it for rough times (Dr. Clive Thomas proven right again).  Fourth, those who collected their pay increase saw it swallowed up.  Fifth, minimum-wagers and part-timers, who were already on a shoestring found themselves in a deeper hole.  Note that I am not including the fat cats and the PPP 4-F battalion (family, etc.).  They patrol the malls on the East Coast, or on New York’s East Side.  Just the little Guyanese, ma’am, who spend their purchasing power on Water or Regent Street.

Now the five elements convey something deeper to me.  Guyanese are depressed about the present, Guyanese fear the future.  The former don’t have to spend, the latter squeeze by taking precautions.  Save something.  This is in a country producing 650,000 barrels of oil daily.  Doctors Jagdeo and Routledge told Guyanese so.  All Guyanese are free to take that number from them.  Not I, gents.  Why should I, when whatever the American and the Guyanese do, have been so disastrous and obnoxious to Guyanese interests?    Regular Guyanese, not the brownnosers and body sniffers around the people’s oil wealth.  Speaking directly to Mr. Routledge:  is wha happen massa, no new oil discoveries recently?  Still busy monetizing known assets?  The problem with these Yankees is that they have been around Guyana’s political dimwits so long that they think every Guyanese is a moron.  I move along.

Old Year’s Nite/New Year’s Eve came stumbling around recently.  Usually, there is a vibrancy and energy in the air.  Hopping streets and shops.  Rushing cars.  Pulsating music.  Booming fireworks.  They were all at a conspicuously lower ebb this December 31^st.  As the oil is sucked from beneath the sea, the air and energy are sucked out of Guyanese.  Now, for the big bang kicker.  What I am about to share is not a tale of two cities, but the story of two kinds of Guyanese.  One kind with Johnnie Walker Blue in their mouths to dull their cotton-picking, betraying minds and full bellies; and the other set living in poverty and with empty stomachs, and only the blues for company.  Ah, the pictures should tell the stories of the haves and the have nots.  There will be those celebrating their high society status in high style, and that huge mass of Guyanese who know that they don’t belong anymore to this farce of a society called One Guyana.  The people at the top are having their fancy-dress balls, while the man-in-the-street has a ball in his gut.  Even with those robbery contract terms that a big man flagged with the word sanctity, there is still enough for everybody to get something and be somebody.  But NO! these farces decided to take the sweet ride out by tying bundle with the white man to betray their own people.  Because every time that the whites set their greedy eyes and covetous hearts on the colored man’s wealth, he does one of two things.  Buys over the sluggards and cowards.  Or, he kills the brave ones that stand in his way (coming soon).  It’s time to close this out.

From the start I had said that there will be more cash grants.  Jagdeo said no, then he said maybe.  President A got the all-clear signal from Mr. J and kept the maybe door open.  Guyanese need it, could use it.  Now for a few New Year words of advice for the president: should there be a grant, order the ministers not to collect it, beginning with Dr. Jagdeo.  Mine whenever it is collected is to help the needy.  Finally, should there be a public service raise, set an example: exempt self from it, sir.  Embarrassing.  Grabbing.  Goring.  And so much more.

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

(2024 – more reflections)

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• Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Guyanese, hard truths, reflecting on 2024, regent street

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