What if…?

May 27, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- What if such and such had happened, then where would Guyana be today?  What if the tide of politics had taken a different turn on March 3^rd or 4^th, 2020, what kind of Guyana would Guyanese have as a matter of reality and a prospect today?  The clock cannot be turned back, but the mind is not inhibited by any such mechanical limitations.  The mental does not obey the laws of physics (the environmental), sometimes it even defies gravity (the tribal), overcomes the flight of time (the wounds of memory).

What if… What if in those first raucous and event-filled days of the post March 2, 2020 interval, the PNC-led coalition had graciously bowed out, readied itself to fight another day.  Wiser.  Stronger.  Smoother.  That day has come, and it is today in this pivotal year numbered 2025.  How much better would the PNC, now the opposition, have positioned itself as a force to be reckoned with, and not the pathetic pushover that even its own people now condemn.  Those who are not too embarrassed to do so publicly.  I think that there would have been the good and the bad.  The former evidenced in some probable traces of goodwill; the latter more terrible in its unprecedented nature.

 

The good is that the victorious PPP may have been inclined to be less vengeful, more open to specks of the inclusive.  Some specks observed, no matter how minute, how far apart.  A different tone in the always rude, abusive conversations, lesser frequency in the revilements and their naked intensity.  Those may have meant something, then again, maybe not; nor have lasted so long as to make a difference.  Conveniently, the interval from March to August and all that pulverized this nation provided the grounds, generated the instincts, for the PPP of Dr. Jagdeo and company to introduce the vindictive and then sharpen its claws, expand its toxic presence.  Relative to the bad, I think that the compulsive stealing, the vast rivers of corruption in their many undulations would have been worse than ever seen in this country.  The PPP has had the gift of the first curse, oil.  The forbidden fruit in the hand and under total control.  Of course, it had to be sampled and sampled.  And then sampled some more in bigger and bigger bites.  The reality of Guyana is that there is the PPP that is hopelessly addicted to thievery and other forms of white-collar banditry.  For some, it is rum or coke (the powdered kind).  For the PPP, from head to toe, it is money.  Oil money.  Loan money.  The money of widows and children, and others of that wretched brigade.

Having looked forward and not trapped itself for five months, and then five years, the PNC and its political cohorts would have positioned themselves, and strengthened their value, for 2025.  The moment is upon us, and there is the PPP and the PNC.  One is sleek and powerful, but as vulnerable as a shark stuck in a sandpit.  The other that should be in the forefront of the hunt today is still trying to pick up the pieces from 2019-2020 and since.  In my brief presence in this country, the Guyanese people have never been readier for change, for patient nurturing, energetic cultivation.  Change that is viable.  A change that is inspiring.  A presence that is credible, because it is visible, audible, and represents some element of the less corruptible.  My God! Are Guyanese of all stripes disappointed to the point of nausea at the corruptions of the PPP Government cabals.  The cabal of leaders.  The cabal of family.  And the cabal of those flaunting their foul gains, while hiding their origins.  Need I say more?

Guyanese are disenchanted and disillusioned and despairing, and it has nothing to do with depressed world market prices or depressed demand.  Those two are favourable, yet huge swaths of Guyana are trapped in hunger and poverty, while the PPP steals bread out of their mouths, and then adds further injury by deceiving them, and taking the people for utter fools.  And I must add, dancing unconcernedly at the top, while our soldiers brave untold dangers at the bottom by the rivers.  All those stand as a rich harvest waiting for the PNC or anybody with the will and character to capitalize.  It is content to lurk in the shadows -formless, toothless, and spiritless.

The issue for me is not where is the PNC and AFC, but what if…  What if, they went down a different road, looking to regroup and gathering strength.  While the scoundrels in the PPP Government seized the riches of Guyana, the PNC couldn’t focus on anything else, and so the oil curse froze the brain of its thinkers, and guided them to prioritize the self-defeating.

Thus, Guyanese absorb the public spectacle of those playing two cards that don’t persuade, but degrade: of who should be the leader, and how much is the split.  From my perspective, those are red herrings with a difference.  Their scales peel off, and what I see are not red herrings that deceive, but green mail that all but informs voters to stay home.  I ask indulgence for using that Wall Street term and stretching it to fit the Guyanese context.  Stay home, because what is the choice?  Where is it?  Where is the difference, the programme, the leadership in which some vestiges of trust can be gambled?  Where is the energy, the passion, the vision?  Have all those been cramped by the Americans?  There it is, oil again, and its curse that is not in any textbook, or expert treatise.

In the most demanding of times, there is a loss of face, loss of place, and loss of a kind unseen in this land.  The loss of a race that is not even genuinely contested.  In sports, there is a history of throwing a fight, fixing a game.  In politics here, I believe with sustained fervor that there is an election season that has already been thrown (and fixed) even before it began.  What if… What if the opposite had taken hold?  Then, perhaps, Guyanese would have had something in which to trust, to hope.  Instead, they have Drs. I. Ali and B. Jagdeo.  They stand untouchable.

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

---

---