The new kid in town

May 28, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- And they’re off.  More accurately, he is off, with his hat thrown into the elections ring.  In boxing terms, elections in Guyana can be the equivalent of the squared circle: barbaric.  Politics is not the sweet science in this country, not for those with squeamish stomachs.

Guyana’s newest presidential candidate must have a cast-iron constitution, a touch that is ever so delicate.  There’s a new kid in town. I sense some excitement.  In considering the conditions in the environment, I foresee a troublemaker, a spoiler, and a showstopper, all rolled into one.  To those, one could add ‘gamechanger’, which is how many see his entry into Guyana’s political pressure cooker.  In the first instance, it is confirmation of how much the PPP has deteriorated and become more depraved as it declined. In the second, it is a reflection of how much credibility the PNC and AFC have lost.  Now comes the test represented by the new presidential candidate that checks on the potency of all three parties, their ability to draw Guyanese into their webs.  The candidate has his own webs to confront, unravel, and overcome.

The fresh new face that is neither so fresh nor so new as to be an unknown jetting in from New York, Toronto, or Florida.  He has been right here, right in the trenches, and right alongside those who are hurting.  Hurting once from a lack of basic provisions, despite a nation of mighty riches.  Hurting twice from the disdain in the PPP, whose brass thinks them dumb and ignorant, mere elections stooges; people who can’t think for themselves, notwithstanding the evidence of their eyes.  Hurting three times and counting, in the men and women and children, and families, who are despairing, losing hope, while their leaders and their cronies gorge themselves on what belongs to the Guyanese people.

Wrench hope from a population, and it becomes desperate.  Ripe for change.  Ready to take a plunge into the unknown, with the untested, the unproven.  Perhaps it is time that Guyanese start all over with a clean slate.  This is where the people of Guyana are now poised, the crossroads that demand a decision from them.

How will they be?  What will they do, come that day, now approximately 100 days distant?  How will the new man do, given the buzz he has stirred?  All the polls that have been conducted indicate that between a fifth and a third of the voters surveyed are ‘undecided.’  The PPP is not trusted, and the PNC and AFC are at the edge of the picture. The new man has become the face that points to all that is wrong with the PPP, the presence to emphasise all that is weak with the PNC and AFC.  Hence the interest and excitement that he generates.

Those undecided on the sidelines could turn out to be the group that, if nurtured and harvested carefully, push him closer to the winner’s enclosure.  Even if that proves to be elusive, given the pull of the tribal in Guyana, he could still be well-positioned to be a difference maker.  Why, in a razor-tight contest, he could even rise to the role of being in that best of places, a kingmaker.  I wish him and his team the best, as I do all contestants.  May the candidate and slate that appeal the most to hurting, angry Guyanese convince them of their sincerity, come out ahead.

I now insert the sobering into this, so far, near cloudless picture.  The PPP is at its baddest when it has its back to the wall.  The new competition will be flogged and flagellated, with all the stops pulled out, any dirty trick that can be conceived of, unleashed for maximum damage.  A weak candidate is a whipped candidate.  On the other hand, one who has the boldness to take the fight to the competition, while aiming for the head, stands a chance, could hold his own.  For the PPP and the PNC (to a lesser extent), this is war, with no holds barred, no prisoners taken.  I think that this can get uglier than ever seen, since so much is at stake.  So many more billions to be hijacked.  So many staring at the spectre of a jail cell, after a public denuding.  It has been that kind of Guyana under the PPP Government.  It has been what has set the population’s teeth on edge, made many brave the vindictive rage of leaders to whom they have been previously loyal.  My word, is this country in a bad place!

Personally speaking, not many people react well to being taken for granted.  Nor do many feel good about themselves when they arrive at that last bus stop: they have been used and abused and treated with all the scorn reserved for garbage.  I think that swaths of Guyanese have had it up to their necks with the PPP far in front, and the PNC and AFC making up the rest of the track.  There is only so much that citizens can take.

What makes matters worse is that those same citizens are not living an abstraction.  They live in local time and exist alongside local conditions.  That ancient standard that ‘all politics is local’ comes into play, and vigorously so.  People see the fat cats in the PPP Government getting more and more bloated, while their own bellies are distended from lack of proper sustenance.  When a man can’t pay his bills month after month, and a mother has to tell her children day after day that that’s all there is, graphs and stats are all spat upon and kicked into the gutter.  So, too, are the leadership narratives.  They don’t soothe any longer, they sicken, they infuriate all the time.

It was the ancient Chinese who came up with a beauty: out of catastrophe comes opportunity.  We shall see.  When there is a crisis in leadership, there must be the best of responsible citizenship.  That also will have its moment.

(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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