A king dismisses a prince

Nov 06, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – This is what leaders do.  Last week, a king kicked out a prince out from his home, stripped him of his luscious titles, and pushed him off the peerage rolls.  It mattered not at all that it is a biological brother.  Sometimes, brothers can go too far, make a damn fool of themselves, become a disgrace to the whole family.  Unfortunately, blood ties and all, there is only one option left.  Out goes he. Too much time had elapsed already.  Out on his head, and cast out into the outer darkness, a world away from palace, pomp, and pageantry, and the other perquisites that go with those.  It is the way it should be.

Frankly, and with every regard to the resident British High Commissioner to Guyana, and other Britishers here for the joy of being around at this time, I have little regard for that cherished institutions of theirs, the monarchy and the raunchy, rollicking members of a family long out of control.  Elizabeth Regina must be shivering in her resting place, disturbed that all her strenuous efforts, her good works, to hold things together, have come to this sorry and shabby juncture.  King Charles III acted with authority and aplomb and, on this occasion of resolve, I look on the man kindly.

I turn my gaze and look at Guyana, and ponder when has such definitive action ever been taken here.  In Guyana’s equivalent of the British royal family, the local political aristocracy, especially when its members have the reins of power in their hands.  Who has the PPP Government ousted from among the ranks of its political blood brothers and sisters?  Who has the PNC, in any form-PNC, PNCR, APNU, or APNU/AFC-when in power sent packing with a hard boot to the behind?  Despite a world of corruption, I challenge both parties, I invite all Guyanese with a functional brain in their skulls, to name one from those bands of brothers and sisters, who have been a disgrace where taxpayer’s money is concerned in this country, and who has been terminated for going too far.  Just one!  Guyana’s political royalty is that immaculate that it doesn’t have one “teef”, one conman, one abuser.

Here in Guyana, the brothers coverup for their brothers; even when there is the irony that the protectors are likely to be in need of much covering up for themselves.  All for one, and all for all, in some of its best renditions, is what Guyanese have had to live with decade after decade, and under one government after another.  Leaders lookout for their own; the protected ones keep the secrets of leaders.  It’s all in the family, and with the population going along.  A king could have the stomach and standard to get rid of his brother, separate him, however painfully, from all those glorious titles and glorious perches.  But here the local kings hide behind a blizzard of words, a series of con jobs, to keep the PPP and PNC families intact.  For the skeptical, I urge recalling almost all of those farces that are called Commissions of Inquiry (COI).  Linden Inquiry.  Mahdia Inquiry.  To lump those shams under the banner of COI should be made into a crime.  Then, there was that US$214 million Exxon audit, where the real intellectual author was spared a public flogging.  And on and on, it was and is in merry olde Guyana.

The point is that a few other men in a few faraway places are moved, in terribly egregious cases, to abandon relationships (biological or political) and let the hammer drop on the head of the offending.  In Guyana, one political king wiggles, another mastermind of a leader jiggles, and it is the same old self-enriching business going on with barely a pause.  When the outrageous are protected by local kings, they are protecting themselves, keeping their own skeletons safe.  They all hold one head, so that no one loses his or her head.  Thus, there is the kind of democracy of which a self-enricher like John Hess could celebrate, while his company’s financials are a maze of mysteries.  Taxes.

In Great Britain, King Charles III could take the courageous and momentous step of dispatching his own sibling into the wilderness.  I respect him for that action.  In Jolly Old Guyana, the kings here are the embodiment of the opposite, i.e., covering up and cursing those who say that the corruption is in many ministries and still spiral above those fields of dirty deeds that trick and cheat Guyanese.

(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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• APNU, British royal family, Guyana’s, PNC, PNCR, Unfortunately

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