The death of this child must inspire genuine change

Apr 30, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- The darkness brought many dangers.  Just over a day ago, the dangers came in waves, ever moving, always inflaming.

Guyana looks at itself, and shouldn’t like it.  I think that many of the more levelheaded and sober in this society saw some of this coming.  Yet Guyana is always caught flatfooted.  Mentally, to some degree.

Fires are as old as this Republic.  Youths on motorbikes weaving in and out of spaces, like metallic Molotov cocktails, are a new development.  A present and future threat of proportions.  Whether in Los Angeles or the lost spaces of Guyana, citizens, younger and older, display the worst kinds of energies.  Those that devastate what is on the ground, and then the mind, next.  Flames symbolize the scorching in the soul that seeks any kind of release, then burns whatever, whoever, is touched.  The unjust and unacceptable responded to with more of what is unjust and unacceptable.  Highly so, and right here, I say it loud and clear.  I condemn, I kick to the curb, fully knowing that nothing is going away, not to be seen again.  The last thing I wish for is that fears are found to be right.  But Guyanese are given a glimpse of what boils underneath.  It is as ugly as sin, and as challenging as an unscaled mountain.  Who will have the courage to stand up and say: it is time that a different way is thought of, started on, and carved out?

What we have is not working.  There is no oneness about it.  Unless there is a count of those who tacitly support, secretly rejoice, at what tumbled into the streets and wreaked havoc across the face of all citizens.  Oneness means that we all speak the same language, stand for the same values, and all have shoulders towards the same national objectives.

This means that the positive statement from the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Aubrey Norton, that there is no support for looting, must be followed up with outstretched hands across the political aisle in an effort to mend Guyana’s (our) gaping wounds.  Wounds that reveal their naked, weakening haemorrhaging before the world, when the unbearable can’t be absorbed anymore.  President Ali has repeatedly said that he stands for ‘peaceful protests’, which I also endorse to the hilt, but his is the leadership responsibility to be a presence that is peaceful.  In his choice of words.  In his calmness when dissatisfied Guyanese push against his will for answers that speak of honesty.  To denounce protests that intensified and expanded as “politically instigated” does not unite, but sets Guyanese into that familiar framework: ‘us against them.’

The passing of Adriana Younge, never to experience the joys and heartbreaks of formative years, teenage years, must be seen and used as a catalyst for change that is better.  It is untimely, but I will risk it: on each occasion that one of the two major demographics in this country has convinced itself that it can do it alone, realization quickly comes that there is fooling of self.  There are different kinds of sharing.  But there must be faces from across the spectrum of Guyana, where there is more of the civil, and not so much of the political.  The political system has corrupted and smashed the people of this country for close to 70 years.  I am always surprised that this society has held together, but migration played a prominent role.

I think that the time is ripe for the governance architecture of Guyana to be reengineered, rebuilt.  The Guyana Police Force is the obvious first priority.  Let’s face this fact, no proper and professional Guyana Police Force drives no real regard for law, for order, for incorruptibility.  Politicians can no longer be trusted to be the stewards of national law enforcement or to have the dominant input.  If there is learning from the protesting, looting, and dying that started with the first death of that child, then there will be openness.  Openness to having local civil society functioning as the bridge that links two groups, two demographics, and two states of mind.  Those in charge-from the president to the Opposition Leader-must be mentally willing to substitute the local for the international, or Guyana will forever be a dependent.  Potential will be about the peace that is expected, but never happens.  Potential will be of the prosperity that is a mirage, other than for the few who get richer and richer, while the masses grow poorer and poorer.

Let this not be another occasion, when those with standing speak of a commission for this and a commission for that mystery to be probed.  The must be an occasion seized by leaders, from the president to those in the opposition, to commission their minds to a different kind of vision.  If the old political tricks resurface and take over, then Adriana Younge would have died for nothing, the protests and the messages from them would be of no value.  If her death has to be the salve that heals, then it must be.  Back to square one is backing into the gates of hell.  Guyanese just got the first taste.  Distrust comes from injustice, and as is often the case, ingrained malice leads to menace and the mayhem just witnessed.

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

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