What’s new in Guyana, troubles Guyanese

Dec 07, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – I am beginning to feel like Julius Caesar.  Watching, listening, overcoming.  What’s going on in Guyana.  Then I thought better of it; I recalled how the powers, the hatchers of plots, got rid of him.  No more Caesar for me, prefer being Mohamed Ali.  Respectfully, not Mohamed Irfaan Ali.  But humbly, Mohamed Ali, the greatest.  In looking on in Guyana, and keeping my ear close to the ground, revelations come: this is a haunted place, one troubled by restless spirits.  First up, I try with tint.

A hundred years after motor vehicles took the road by storm (plus lots of exhaust aromas), there are these pros and cons about tint on vehicles.  I notice that even some bicycles and horse carts are favoring a darker outlook on life.  Traffic is a part of the problem.  I hear well-spiced, well-kneaded, arguments of those in love with tint, and I say that’s fine during the holiday season.  After all, drunk drivers have a right to fight to maintain obscurity behind dark shades, the darkness of night, and dark tint.  Who was driving that high-priced luxury vehicle?  Somehow, it always seems to be as fresh and sober as a macaw volunteer.  Justice in action; debt to society and the injured (or dead) paid in full.  Guyana’s dollars accepted gratefully, with the arrangers getting their cut.

All’s well that ends well, but who wants to live in a gated community to which the world beats a hasty path, only to discover that all the houses and fences are painted black?  Oil is black.  No matter how sweet it is, it is still crude and viscous.  But do the vehicles of the princes and princesses of this local Roman amphitheater all have to be shrouded in the blackest, most ominous appearing tint?  Funny how when the rich and powerful start a fashion, how even the not as rich, nor anywhere near power, (the poor) in Guyana decide that they have to imitate those clowns.  Sorry for any hurt feelings, so that’s recalled.  No clowns, just comrades and fellow citizens.  Here is my bottom line on tinted vehicles: each time that I encounter a wall of menacingly tinted Guyanese chariots-Germans, Italians, or cheaper Japanese and Koreans-the thought that springs is that Guyanese have made mourning a national industry, a thriving offshoot of the diversified economy of which I hear so much.  Good going lads and lasses.  But know that I am against tint, especially when it is flaunted as a badge of arrival at 135 percent.  Bharrat Jagdeo helped unwittingly.  There is a man with a known fear of the light, and he is against tint beyond 35 percent.  He and mee is waan pun dis one.

Now savor this beauty.  Parking is a chronic problem in the big city, but Guyanese have a problem with concrete drains erected, fenced over, and being charged for the space.  Guyanese are so lawless that a little discipline, toeing the line, is acute appendicitis for them.  I ally with cash grant magician, Dr. Ali on drainage and parking.  Now for something better.  A driver passed a home, saw something on the people’s bridge and objected.  Against the law, City Hall said so.  When will Guyanese return to the joys of reading, hopefully gain some wisdom?  City Hall cautioned against impediments on public spaces, such as parapets.  So, how do citizens boasting of education mistake a private bridge for public convenience?  Happened to some people I know, where the driver parked on their bridge, and insisted that it’s government property.  On occasion, I think that flying out and dealing with Donald John might be more wholesome, invigorating for the brain cells.  I knew that Guyana had them, but so many problem children everywhere are just too much to manage.

Indeed, I hear the screams from Freedom House and Office of the President: go back whence thy came.  The trouble begins when the people up north insist that the boat came on should be rejoined, taken the other way.  It’s a tuff world.  I’ll take my chances here, am nobody’s fool.  America doesn’t have cash grants.  Nor the cast of characters and theater that make life so exciting here.  One last one, an appeal to Drs. Ali and Jagdeo.  There is no vehicular noise nuisance destroying the ambience around private hospitals.  Excellent!  So, why not the same standard for poor patients at the Big Hospital (GPHC)?  Poor shouldn’t be punishment.  Why are their eardrums ruptured, rest interrupted, and pain intensified?  Roaring engines.  Thundering music.  Please don hospital gowns, Drs. Ali and Jagdeo and deliver.  Not a newborn, but no horns, no breaking of the sound barrier.

(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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• GHK Lall, Guyana, Julius Caesar, troubles

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