Unvarnished truth

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

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(Kaieteur News) – Leaders must be told the unvarnished truth.  So said the venerable Dr. Ian McDonald in his Sunday, Oct 5, 2025 column in SN.  Yessir!  Unvarnished truth, what is that creature?  Who dares to tell leaders, any leader, that kind of truth?  Closer to home, which leader in the government, opposition and, even in the nonpolitical realm, as in commercial or spiritual, welcomes being presented with unvarnished truth?  Or, likes being reminded of it?

Representing unvarnished truth in the land of free speech can result in bringing one’s career from within government ranks to a jarring and ignominious end.  I am talking about America.  If such are the circumstances there, then what favourable reception of such truth elsewhere?  First of all, what is unvarnished truth?  For one, it has no coating, there is no fiddling around with cosmetics.  For another, there is no fear of telling it.  For a third, there is no resistance to being told it.  Truth is truth, and no matter its gagging castor oil taste, and accompanying laxative effects of it, such truth finds ready and genuine hospitality in those who are serious about it.  Personal depth, individual commitment to principle, ensures there isn’t the deviousness of hypocritical doublespeak, artic frown, pushback.  From either unvarnished truth teller or absorbing listener.  The recipient-listener doesn’t have the luxury, the veto power, of defining, or qualifying as ‘constructive.’  This is what the territory holds, what the issue is all about, plain and simple, and there’s only one way about it.  Remember -one way only.  Unvarnished only has one shade about it: What is in its natural form, what brooks neither dissension nor rejection.  For to do either mark those doing so as liars, impersonators, actors operating on slippery and shifting foundations.

Domestic bed check.  What’s the Guyanese experience, past and present, been with unvarnished truth?  A check of the emigration rolls is a good start.  There it is on slips of paper.  The record of those compelled to seek flight because they stood for truth, which necessitated taking up residence in other climes.  There is another more revealing record, one of pusillanimity, what is crafty and, I assert, possessing broad streaks of ambitious calculations.  Those who twist their lips to change their tunes.

For some, money trumps truth on Good Friday, Eid day, and Diwali Day.  Together, with the latter preeminent, Guyana has had the precursor to the long, dark night of the soul.  Fair is foul and foul is fair.  I challenge-to tone things down I exhort-name a leader in this country that appreciates being told, as it is.  Meaning, embraces unvarnished truth.  Here is a test, a different kind of laboratory experiment, in an environment where unvarnished truth is supreme in the eyes of leaders, what could be said of so many public relations staff, so many props (contrary and ornery counteractors)?  When truth prevails, there isn’t any job opening for so many defenders, translators, shapers and re-shapers of doubting minds.  They are out of work and pocket, because there is no need for them.  When the opposite dominates, that confirms how much unvarnished truth has suffered, and how much counter narratives that clash with real truths must be put in action, to sway with deceptions.  There is no such animal as a half-truth; a half-truth is varnished truth.  An ugly monstrosity given the most capable L’Oreal treatment.  The facade (surface truth) holds for a while.  Then cracks, flakes, peels, slides off.

There’s another aspect to unvarnished truth.  It is a two-way street.  Unvarnished truth must be told to leaders, and leaders must, in turn, tell unvarnished truths to all listeners, the same truths to every audience.  Splitting hairs is not unvarnished truth.

Dodging between raindrops does not deliver unvarnished truth.  Being cute with truth, too clever by half, isn’t unvarnished truth.  Resorting to silence, or faking comfort via omission, follows the same dubious track.  What have Guyanese had, if not all four all at once and at an accelerated rate, since the sweet stuff started to surge from below the seabed?  What is the record of Guyanese telling unvarnished truth to their leaders, or leaders telling them what qualifies as that kind of unsparing, uncomfortable truth?  At best, Guyana is not a land of unvarnished truth tellers, but of pathological deceivers.  Deceivers who peddle their wares for rewards, and the self-deceivers who willingly participate in underhanded games in pursuit of power (and purse strings).  They hide, they glide.  It is Guyana unvarnished. Guyana unmasked.

Now try Germany.  In a decade and a half, not once did former Chancellor Angela Markel lie to the German people.  Nor presided over one scandal during her time in government.  Women of Guyana, say something.  Men and leaders of Guyana, there is unvarnished truth.  No makeup allowed.

(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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• Deceivers, GHK Lall, Ian McDonald, Unvarnished truth

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