When the raw sewage of politics spills everywhere

Feb 26, 2026 Features / Columnists

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – Call me a Neanderthal, dismiss me as a UFO.  But the fervently held belief is that there’re certain places in which politics should be off-limits.  Doesn’t belong, period.  Never be allowed to intrude.  Full stop.

Today, the lines that held forever crumble one brick at a time.  There is no dam to hold back the raw sewage that seeps into daily interactions of people, swamps the social fabric, and eventually devours it.  No! it’s not the New World Order emerging by nose, then monstrous head.  It is those routines, long taken for granted, that are overwhelmed by harsh narratives, aggressive dealing with differences, and white-hot zeal to stay on those roads.  I elaborate, begin locally.

Guyana’s National Assembly should be an exemplary house of civility.  Prominent with unswerving dedication to old-school standards of self-discipline and respect for opponents.  When there is contempt for opponents, no matter how deserving, it is scorn for the people who sent them to parliament.  The old, simple mathematical formula still hold fast: if A is equal to B, and B is equal to C, then A equals C.  Substituting: when A disrespects B, then A disrespects C.  It cuts both ways.  Neither conducive to healthy social cohesion, a forgotten vision now; or the production of One Guyana, whoever that encircles, what seeks oxygen now.

I would like to see some genuine conciliatory, courteous, efforts throughout parliament.  Old grudges lead to new acrimonies.  Acrimonies, ancient or modern, fuel more hate, more divisions.  A world detested.  Definitely not the world in which I wish to live.  Others can have it, relish it.  Exclude me.  Politics can be lively to the point of boisterous exuberance.  But not one parliamentarian should empower it to be inseparable from the gutter.  Or represent the sewage of Guyana bubbling up uncontrollably, and taking hold of senses, while accelerating abandonment of circumspection, and disregard for the dignity of others.  Perhaps, there are those who dismiss that as old-school.  Here’s a reminder: old school is timeless; never out of session, doesn’t take a recess.

A holiday from even shaking hands now characterizes encounters between India and Pakistan on sporting fields.  Cricket, a game dear to hundreds of millions within neighbours, is swept up, an extension, of the state of war that simmers between the two countries, the product force pruned from one soil.  It’s where men in whites meet in the fiercest competition.  Where bat meets ball with every ounce of energy expended on both sides of that sporting equation.  Yet deficient in the courage to meet at midfield and let hands clasp with the mutual respect shared among gladiators in a fight to the death.  National hostilities intruding on the field of play, overtaking individual and group honour.  Is there not one champion, one knight, from either side, who has the daring, the independence, to break ranks and say: that is not me, will never be me, and make that simplest of human gestures.  Extend a hand to shake a hand.

The hands kept resolutely at the sides confirm how the raw sewage of politics has seeped into sporting arena.  A German of distinction could have defied the odds under Hitler’s watch and reached to America’s Jesse Owens, while the Nazi machinery watching.  A hundred years later, it is clear that the stuff of the sewer has succeeded in establishing its own special mastery on India and Pakistan.  When politics pierces so deeply, then all are profaned.  Former England cricket captain, Mike Atherton, said the wisest words to date on the India-Pakistan stalemate.  It has gone too far, been incentivized to dive low, drill lower.  I say this: some time, these two are going to blow-up each other.  From sewage to shards scattered all over in a radioactive winter.  Hands may be wrung then, not shaken.

In America, the art of lying is now cherished as leadership.  Demagoguery, raw Montgomery and Little Rock style racial visions, now saturate a place that I thought was better.  If in Washington, then Dallas, Lynchburg, and Macon County are as good as gone into the pile of sewage and liking it.  Inspiringly, there are those still raising voice, standing against, gaining inches of hard-fought ground.  Who’s willing to fight, to sacrifice here?  The raw sewage of politics must be resisted tooth-and-nail from becoming part of the regular national diet.  Guyanese can be for sewage.  I stand apart.

(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’s National Assembly, Politics, sewage

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