The utensils of the Republic

Dec 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – Some countries have national birds, national flowers, national anthems. Guyanese – ever ingenious, ever industrious—have produced something more remarkable: the national utensil.

Not the fork, not the spoon, not the hybrid plastic monstrosity called the spork. No, our indigenous utensil is human. Upright, two-footed, and eternally in the service of doing the dirty bidding of the PPPC.

These stooges come in various shapes. Some waddle, some strut, some appear to have been excavated from the deeper sediments of political society. Yet they share the willingness to be used. They have the politeness of a battered pot, the loyalty of a frying pan that sits on the stove waiting for abuse, and the dignity of a dented cup kept only because the owner is too sentimental to throw it away.

These utensils are dispatched to “strongholds” whenever an Opposition figure wanders in, foolish and hopeful, as though he has arrived to distribute salvation and salted biscuits. The utensil brigade appears. A terrifying spectacle, except that the effect is ruined by their tragic earnestness. They do not intimidate. They merely remind one that every kitchen has its discarded tinware.

The ruling party, ever paranoid, ever inventive in its belief that the world conspires against it, treats these utensils as frontline soldiers. If only the British officers who once stalked this soil could see what now passes for an army: men in cheap jerseys and rubber slippers, puffed up with borrowed bravado, shouting slogans written for them by someone who only passed English by divine accident.

Their mission is not necessarily to invite trouble, even though this is part of their arsenal. Their mission is to prevent citizens, of the ruling party’s strongholds, from the right to a different opinion from their masters. This is the work of the utensils.

And yet, one must concede: some of these utensils are pressed into service. They have families. They have mouths to feed. Perhaps they have left behind a hungry child at home. Yes, poverty is a wicked puppeteer. It tugs their strings. But even pity has its limits. There must be a line between survival and willing degradation. Between earning bread and becoming political tableware.

A few, however, are enthusiastic. These are the premium utensils, the stainless-steel cutlery of the regime. The ones polished with flattery, buffed with promises, and hung ceremoniously in the political kitchen. They possess a certain zeal, a certain melodrama. They walk around with the seriousness of teaspoons guarding a fortress, unaware of the comedy they embody.

One must add a special class of utensil—the opportunists, those who leap onto the gravy train. These are not the downtrodden, nor the coerced. These are the well-fed, well-oiled tools whose loyalty can be purchased by any administration. They attend political events and they rush to disrupt Opposition meetings not out of conviction but to secure their next helping of state-sponsored stew. Their clatter is the loudest, for nothing rattles more than a pot already full.

Whenever a new political party attempts to speak to citizens in these strongholds, these utensils muster into offensive formation. They do not listen. They do not think. Thinking would require effort, and like all items created for use, they prefer to be gripped and swung by someone else. They shout down questions, they hurl accusations, they create a carnival of noise in which no idea—however modest—can survive.

One remembers Walter Rodney. When the PNC of old dispatched its own cookware to clatter against him, he would calmly ask his supporters to expose who these characters were—not to shame, merely to identify the tools of oppression. And what an embarrassment that must have been: to have one’s entire purpose in life reduced to being pointed at and classified as a state-issued pot.

Today’s utensils could benefit from such an unveiling. Let them be seen for what they are: not villains, not ideologues, not even proper thugs, but simple, wretched tools. Instruments of inconvenience. Men who mistake the clang of their own noise for relevance. Some might even rediscover their humanity when the glare of public scrutiny melts the bravado off their faces.

Others, alas, will persist. They will remain the battered pots of politics—dented, lopsided, and nourished by the scraps of patronage. They will continue to shout, to disrupt, to be a nuisance, all while believing they are participating in a grand crusade to save a government that hardly know their names.

And the ruling party, trembling at the thought of anyone addressing its base, will keep deploying them like overpriced utensils in a kitchen that has long forgotten the taste of honest labour. For paranoia is hungry, and fear is a glutton, and the political pot must be kept boiling. In the end, these utensils will be washed, stored, and forgotten—retrieved only when next there is trouble to be made. And that, perhaps, is the deepest tragedy: not that they are used, but that they are so very willing to be.

(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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• indigenous utensil, Peeping Tom, PPPC, Republic, utensils

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