Politics, elections, oil, then what’s deep inside

Aug 14, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – First, I thought that Guyana’s vulgar politics was responsible.  Wrong.  Then, the fevered pull of oil money came to mind.  Hit wicket and gone.  Next, the belief was that elections bring out the worst in the best of Guyanese.  The stretcher came out, to defray the haze from the bouncer that struck the head.

In still grasping for anything to explain, to comfort, on how some Guyanese can let themselves go, I said that it must be some combination of the madness of politics, elections, and as both are now fueled and refueled by the energies unleashed by oil.  Sadly, I am still striking out, coming up empty.  Then I hit the jackpot by letting the mind wander, with random error leading to enlightenment.  What some Guyanese are doing to get them going on the elections trails is to dig deep to bring out the ugliest strains that are lodged deepest inside of them.  What some men and women are succeeding in keeping carefully hidden for almost a lifetime is given the fullest pressure on the accelerator and there’s jumping to the head of the mob.

When certain standards were treated with benign indifference, as part of Guyana’s unofficial culture, in parliament, I said to myself that those were not going to expend the last breath of energy in that once hallowed house, now nothing than a bawdy house and outhouse on its better days.  Those standards were going to find opportunities for greater expression, more pungent application, in the big, sprawling places of Guyana.  Elections are the best place to put colourful vocabulary and salacious ideas into action.

Leaders are pleased, take note: that one has uses, is a keeper, could go places.  Performers prove their worth; and if that means having to outdo contemporaries and the competition in the lascivious and lecherous, then it is a small price to pay.  The sacrifice of one’s self-respect, discarding of all the patient teachings from the cradle up, is nothing compared to the big prizes waiting, promised, and not yet quite within the grasp.  Admittedly, there is palpable fear that the prize could slip from the grasp.  Therefore, all the stops have to be pulled out, all restraint kicked into the trash heap.

It is said and known that when men let their hair down, go overboard, then the wisdoms of sobriety are cast aside, and the frankness of drunkenness runs amok.  To put this differently, a man drunk with strong drink will let all the poisons in him erupt to the fore and not care.  There is always the fallback cushion – a fig leaf that renders more naked, truth be told – of having one too many, and not falling so far again.  The stupor of liquor does have its jives and share of jumbie stories.  But elections are in a class by themselves; Guyanese ones are so, I insist.  What was always a very volatile brew now has another ingredient to overheat the national political stew.  It is that most inflammatory of volatile commodities oil.  Crude oil, no matter how light, how sweet, and how smooth, it is still a fearsome monster in a red dress, and demon in a green shirt.  Men see stars, jump into the cesspit to sell themselves.

Worse, oil has made men who were once masters of themselves sink so low that they sell their own mothers and their children with a conspirator’s smile on their faces.  If Guyana’s politics and elections were always insufferable and intolerable; now the arrival of oil just pushed both past the point of no return.  Men will say anything, do anything, to curry favour with their handlers, to catch the eye of their seniors.  There is no such thing as too low, or too crude, or what’s off-limits.  Big men are battling in a bigger game for the biggest rewards.  Nobody is holding back, or looking back.  Or looking at and listening to themselves.  The old and proven hustlers are content to take a backseat and let the new dogs on the block duke it out with the enemy, as part of their rite of passage.  It is part of paying one’s dues.

I can appreciate the Young Turks demonstrating how far they can spray the territory.  But not the older ones, especially those from a lifetime of discipline, spit and polish.  Apparently, the polish faded long ago, leaving only spit and a word that rhymes with it for companions.  The history books teach that when the white man came, he brought diseases ranging from smallpox to the common cold, along with insatiable greed.  The most venomous, most dehumanizing, one that he brought was greed for oil.  Guyanese had politics and elections.  Now there’s oil, and its pandora’s box of horrors.  Need someone criminalized or sexualized?  Guyanese are available for those jobs.

(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, oil, oil money, Politics, vulgar

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