The more things change

Oct 22, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – I think that today I will start out in a scriptural node, with the Book of Ecclesiastes favored.  There is nothing new under the sun.  What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again.

The secular equivalent is history repeats itself.  In the middle of gathering storms of war, Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali went to his full height and hit the highest note.  “We will not yield an inch of territory.”  Magnificent, I say, more in awe at the splendor of the spectacle, than any comforting reality.  And then what was nagging unfolded itself in a rush -heard before, absorbed before with Venezuela before providing the backdrop of ill-will due to the illness of its leadership clique.  I walked back in time to over 50 years ago, and can still hear one LFS Burnham: “not a blade of grass.”

Twist it or turn it, and what was a symphony back then has returned in the symmetry of “not yield an inch of territory.”  If it wasn’t a symphony, the late, great, Dave Martins made “not a blade of grass” into both chamber and grassroots music.

Without a doubt, the leaders of the PPP try their best to pretend at not being Burnham.  But the harder they try to be the anti-Burnham, the more they succeed in being inseparable from Burnham.  The more that the PPP works at being unlike the PNC, the more it is worse than the worst that the PNC had to offer.  How about gold smuggling for the latest, and how once sacred friendships of the PPP and its leadership are pawned off on others! Guess who is the beneficiary of that beautiful friendship?  Burnham’s PNC had control of the Guyana Police Force, but hasn’t the PPP of Jagdeo and Ali done it one better, and then several laps more?

There is control, then there is total control.  In the years of this millennium (minus four and a half), the PPP of Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo first, then the other doctor, Irfaan Ali, took the Guyana Police Force and did more than remake it into the mold within their minds.  They made the national police machinery into a flunkey of Freedom House.  Will somebody answer that damn phone, it could be a big one from the party calling, and den aall ah wee deh in big truble!  Whoever has stars see stripes.  And who has stripes find themselves naked and scarred, and lashed to the masthead.  Whoever had a nice comfy arrangement with the family suddenly find themselves posted to some remote and barren community.  Burnham still has the edge?  Okay, then try this one to see which is the better fit.

Back in the day, some green clothes people wreaked havoc on the streets of GT against those deemed to be menacing political opponents.  In recent days, some red clothes people took it out on some blue clothes people in one community after the other, and with the police finding itself trapped in the unhappy mode of unseeing, unhearing, and unknowing bystander.  Things got so spirited that even some PPP women dropped all pretense and got down and dirty.  Next, Burnham took over the media, and wielded it into a weapon to beat up and beat down Guyanese, while using it to do a superb job of beating around the bush on the real issues.  Ah tell peeple, dis BG palatiks nah easee.

So, where are we?  Take the media, take social media, take the police paraphernalia, take the phobia and mania of the PPP on the streets and in the villages of Guyana, and where is Burnham in that picture?  How does he compare?  Can he even begin to compare?  Psychological terror.  Now the compass comes full circle.  There are those headhunters in Caracas, Venezuela.  As an aside, look at how that man has slurred, insulted, and degraded Guyana’s number one citizen, and not one of his social media superstars dare open their mouths in response, such is their gutless, spineless, and bloodless state.

But ask them to try their hand on a citizen that doesn’t have a trace of their criminal taint, and they are a bundle of courage, energy.  If there was one feature that Burnham personified, it was that he walked tall, fought his battles frontally.  None of these skulking, crawling, tricksters attacking from behind bushes.

Meanwhile, Maduro is busy digging out the eye (figuratively) of Guyana’s president, and the bold badmen of the PPP bark at his back.  The PPP of Jagdeo and Ali say that Burnham was a big badman, the bogeyman that use to frikken women and children.  So, who is the bigger badman of all in Guyana’s history?  Burnham or Barry?  The other fellow is a nice guy, but merely an empty suit.

(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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• Ecclesiastes, GHK Lall, Irfaan Ali, Not a blade of Grass

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