Guyana – What kind of country, society, is this?

Feb 18, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – What kind of country is this?  What does it say of the quality of the society that the best that can be produced and hailed as success stories, are so wanting?  Wanting in what inspires trust.  Wanting in what fosters belief.  Consider the facts in the environment, what are sure to generate the arguable, but cannot be overcome because they are so undeniable.

One national leader carries the history of over a dozen and a half serious charges as part of the hair on his head.  Thanks to the cleverness, resourcefulness, of loyal friends, that raft of charges sank slowly underwater.  Good riddance, hands washed of that inconvenient nuisance.  There is a residual consideration of which very few summon the courage to address.

Though the raft of charges sank, the water is so translucent that the shadowy, bulky hulk of that deliberate sinking can still be seen from the bow of passing boats, or from distant shores.  Still, that is held aloft as the operation of law in this country.  Some country, it is.  One where there are these one-man tribunals, and one-man juries.  The majesty and honesty of Justinian it is not.

Some kind of special country Guyana has to be, when the citizen weighed down by the baggage of such a slew of charges can be sponsored for the best that can Guyana offer to its own.  What can be said of the quality of the society in which this is celebrated as respect for law and order, the blindness of its application and operation?  The power of redemption, or redemption twisted into a grotesque expression of what closeness to power makes possible?

Another leader now risen to national prominence has almost a dozen charges hanging like the sword of Damocles above his neck.  His neck is so inviting that foreigners in Washington want a thick slice of him.

To compound matters, he has close to the same number of charges laid against his name right here.  The difference between the first leader and this second one is that his old friends have abandoned the latter, claim never to have known him.  Despite a trail of photographic evidence.  Cameras don’t have a mind of their own.  It is what I know; maybe the technology has outraced me and outsmarted me (again).

The new man who has new friends is the most talked about currently in Guyana, with all eyes focused on him.  Some glare and fear (former comrades); some stare and bare their breasts.  Is he the one to carry to the Promised Land?  It would be the height of irony if he is seen as Peter the Hermit, the spearhead of a local crusade (A Pauper’s Crusade) against infidels and the dhimmi, given his heritage.  I wonder what Salah al-Din would think of such an inconceivable, imponderable development.

Amid the budget debate and disputes about growth and figures, these are the leading men on Guyana’s political stage.  It says something about how ascent and success are measured in this country.  It also gives a clear indication of how tangled and twisted this country is, in that this is the best that it can select and then let them loose to lead the way.

One is garrulous and frivolous, not taken seriously by serious citizens.  the other is subdued, the keeper of many deep secrets.  Some personal, some national.  And all that can breakopen a frightening pandora’s box, fuel a local political wildfire.  Three out of four Guyanese voters cast their ballot for the two of them, notwithstanding all the negatives, whether alleged or zigzagging and shimmering in the crown that is commonsense.

Again, I raise that earlier question: what kind of society is this that puts most of its eggs in these two porous and precarious leadership baskets, and then with the complacency of the self-satisfied assert: I have done my duty, there is nothing else left for me to do, so help me God.  The bad news for Guyanese is that the divine that manages destinies grew so disgusted that Guyana was given up on, a while back.

All the gifts of providence that could be dreamed of, desired, and yet this is the ghastly terminal where matters coagulate.  One who had the stain and stench of near a score of charges, but slithered through that net.  A second who has bundles of charges, who shakes and wiggles, but is still stuck.  With this spectacularly singular duo, Guyanese are now stuck.

(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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• Dr. Irfaan Ali, GHK Lall, Guyana

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