Elections – the meaning

Jun 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Elections are looked at differently today.  Not from the perspective of who seems the better leader, more trustworthy.  Not of which group is the lesser of two evils (or three).  I think of the upcoming elections, through the eyes of the poor in Guyana.  The working class, remember that force that became a phantom, then a leper?  Those straddling the poverty line, from whom faces are turned.  And those who don’t matter, save for when elections come.  I think that the elections are best viewed, through the lens of a few questions.  From the mind of the poor, the ordinary, the man-in-the-street, the distressed woman.

First, what does this much-talked about, great oil mean?  Specifically, what difference has it made in my life; my quality of life enhanced?  Second, how has my community benefited?  Third, has anybody done well, and who are they?  Last, whose has not improved, why is that so, how can that be, when the news is bright and beautiful?  I think these questions get their greatest resonance, derive the strongest passions, when they are blended into this one: am I better today than five years ago, when the first oil came gushing out from under the sea, like one of those world-famous geysers in Nevada or California, New Zealand or Iceland?

I will refrain today from knocking the heavy spending on infrastructure, with its wonderful cover story of preparing for the next century.  Or its twilight zone, where the hundreds of billions every year provide the numerous openings for self-help, aka corruption.  None of that is visited today.  The focus is unwaveringly fixed on the regular family that could have purchased a loaf of bread daily, or have enough flour for roti weekly, or that amount of rice that lasted as it should.  Can they do the same today with some degree of freedom?  Or, is it now a matter of stretching a dollar that is sharply shorter, hence having to settle for what is lesser on the family table?  A few days ago, I reminded Guyanese of that truism: all politics is local.  In place of the local, swap the individual.  Again, is he, is she, am I, better off today with all this oil pumping than five year ago, when there was not a drop in the news?  There it is, Elections 101.  Maybe, not as sophisticated as that, and more of Form 1 Civics, of which I heard something recently.

From the poor family’s standpoint-single mother, single earner, single pensioner, single source of income citizen-is this situation widespread, or unique to us?  There’s the village.  It is not Bel Air Village.  Nor the village of Republic Park.  Certainly not that of Prado-Ville.  Unlike the Guyanese resident in the villages just identified, has the oil wealth, with all the great news of high-income classification (World Bank), world class GDP (Tom, Dick, and Harry) and annual record breaker budgets (government), carried me and my family, along on its powerful, unstoppable crests?  Has it carried my larger family of neighbours upwards with its spiral?  In a country that went from producing 278,000 barrels per day to 450,000 bpd, and now to 650,000 bpd, these questions should not even have to be asked.  Because to do so would amount to sedition, since Guyanese are living the kind of life that is powered by being the third highest oil-producing country per capita in the world.  Unbelievable!  Third highest per capita global producer, a GDP that reached as high as a monumental 62.3%, means YOU, and YOU, and YOU.  With not a single Guyanese left out, including me.  Has it been so?  That would be the beginning and end of any election right there, when there are stats like those.

The beneficiary from the oil, who is in the vicinity of the poor family, the struggling community, cannot be limited to one man and his family, and their cronies.  People see.  The family that doesn’t have enough studies and broods, over inequity and unfairness.  The partisan interprets the discriminatory.  Those in agony summon that last spurt of energy to scream: damn it to hell!  This should not be, never be.  A belated envelope is grabbed, but that cannot be all, does not go far.  All the pavements in the world take me nowhere.  I am still stuck, but with a difference.  The burdens feel heavier, are more intolerable.  Because they shouldn’t be.  Not when those controlling the money take home as much as 50 times the man making the minimum.  Or, at a lower governing title 30 times.  If there is pain to be felt, then all should feel it, from top to bottom.

In this time of elections, there’s that stubborn question: am I better off today, my family managing comfortably?  If not, then why so?

(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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• Elections, GHK Lall, Hard Truths by GHK Lall, poverty, Prado-Ville, working class

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