Return to normalcy – what is ‘normalcy’?

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

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

 Kaieteur News– Fires, violence, and looting all arrived in tandem, on racing feet, and out of nowhere.  Well, so the Guyanese people are told.  Almost as quickly, but with less volume, the curfew was lifted after 72 eggshell hours.  For many, the minutes had that fragile quality about them.  Curfew was in, then curfew was out.  I will not second-guess the government’s decision.  But there was that accompanying translation, with which I have a problem, many of them.  The curfew had to go, because ‘normalcy’ had returned home.  Interesting.

There are no questions for Excellency Ali about what he and his government’s definition of normalcy is.  I know better now.  Because a straight answer is called for today, and not a political one.  Or, more accurately, not the PPP’s definition of this much-desired, most-welcomed normalcy.  Mysterious and magical normalcy, I tender.  This normalcy now being given a vigorous shaking by the government and its broadcasters could be of a different kind, one with which Guyanese of all stripes are familiar.  Try these for size.

The normalcy of returning to rank inequity, and what builds from that experience.  In a general sense, it’s the particularly hard reality of one segment of Guyana’s demographic.  Then, the normalcy of battling with the more immediate, but bloodless, intimidations of a crippling, fear-inducing cost-of-living regime.  It’s a pain that cuts across economics and demographics; the power of the former is not in hand, the reach of the latter haunts consciousness and sleep, and only a few are exempted.  Inequity and prices are not textbook abstractions, the stuff of graphs and charts.  They are real, and they are paralyzing, for inequity and prices have the visible and physical about them.  Plus, the kick of a mule to the head or the belly.  Such has been the Hobson’s Choice of ordinary and also palpably disturbed Guyanese.  Either way, there is pain and fear, both of which are compulsory elements in the PPP’s world of ‘normalcy.’  The deformed world of demented men and women, I crave the indulgence of leaking.

But with the curfew gone (and it had to, no objections here), and normalcy back in business, there is that other aspect of Guyanese life that has one quality of normalcy to it, and to an extraordinary degree.  It is intangible, the weight of the psychological: anxiety, uncertainty, and a sense of inevitability.  It is the normalcy of crippling concerns over when is the next time.  For a flaring of tensions, and an outpouring of the raw, and the delivering of the destructive.  That is, the personally destructive.  From my perspective, its roots can be traced to that unholy quintet of Guyanese life that is fused at the elbow and hip.  Police crime.  Street crime.  Blue-collar crime.  Political crime.  Leadership crime(s).

The much-marketed normalcy, of which the PPP Government is so proud, is when one segment of Guyana’s population is reduced to a squalid existence.  It has nothing to do with economics, just the mere combination of street physics and governing politics.  The record shows that the physics of the street has a certain kinetic power to it.  It’s a different form of mass times acceleration, but with the same result.  People running scared, running for their lives, running for any stelling, any bus park, anywhere but where they are.  Those who like to experiment with fireworks soon have a bonfire raging, many of them.  Some shortsighted citizens will take umbrage and rage, but that is where the politics intrude.

Because there is that other return to normalcy, and it is as regular as a strong laxative.  The PPP points to the PNC, the PNC points to the PPP.  When God made the earth to spin on its axis, the PPP and PNC were part of the package.  Guyanese on both sides of the divide, along with the few above it, gather their facts, hone their senses, and remove the scales from their eyes.  Who is the better spinner, makes the loudest, most credible appeal: the PPP or the PNC relative to authorship, sponsorship, and ownership of the monstrosities of Monday, 4/28?  Yeah, it is that kind of society, and that is an outstanding feature of Guyana’s normalcy.  The PNC has some power; like America, it is waning, but there is still some sporadic, haphazard energy.  In contrast, the PPP Government has all the power.  I repeat for the present and for posterity: all the power.  Money power.  Police power.  Recruiting power.  Crossover power.  Put them all together, and there is that political beauty: street power.  It is a unique type of normalcy, but still normalcy.  Twist it, turn it, toss it, this is the new normalcy.  Get used to it.

(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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