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Mar 15, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – From the law of unintended consequences, I highlight situations that deliver unintended exposures. BBC World Questions: Guyana revealed internationally what Guyana really is, where Guyanese are. The former is a snake pit, the latter a crab dance gathering. What it did was put to shame Excellency Ali’s One Guyana scheme, and confirmed to the widest audience, what a failure that is.

The PPP went to the Pegasus with its paid cheerleading squadron. Thus, the arena converted to a political gladiatorial amphitheater was dominated by those with exclusive rights to One Guyana benefits. The PPP-summoned hooted and hollered, clapped their hands and stamped their feet, as prompted, as choreographed. A fine spectacle it was.

A finer spectacle it was, and an assault on Pres. Ali’s One Guyana monument, that’s now nothing but a graveyard, when the PNC battalion put in its own appearance for the BBC show. The drinks were plentiful, flowed freely, and the food gobbled up, though not of the best culinary quality. But there they were, and thus it was. One Guyana that’s really Guyana fractured into two, with that merely the start. The PNC Guyana had its moments, but all the advantages of the home team went to the PPP mythmakers marshalled to full assembly and charged up to give the fullest display of their harvests from Guyana’s Oil Dorado. Who could speak more of oil’s prosperity than those who actually collect it? And who has gotten more than the circle of PPP insiders, and less than the segments in the Guyanese population demographic that PPP bigots circled out?

What the BBC heard, and what the world both saw and heard, was how much oil has divided Guyanese. The farce of One Guyana collapsed under its own weight from a deluge of impassioned words, and in slow motion. None are more impassioned than religious and political fundamentalists. What the BBC’s audience should know, or just found out, was that the national religion is politics and politics is God Almighty. I sure have to offend somebody with that blasphemy. When everybody is dripping with riches, nobody is quarreling openly. They simply plot and plan covertly about how to help themselves to their neighbour’s rich stock of assets. How to render him or her poorer, a non-competitor for the crown of being the richest. Fact of life, isn’t it? Here’s another. Greed begets more greed. And still one more. When everyone is poor, shoulders are shrugged, bellies are banded more tightly, and the word that spread is aal ah wee deh in de same boat. So though looking at nothing, the commitment is to lookout for one another. That is, until the One Guyana caravan comes rolling around the corner, and there is separating of sheep from goat. Who get leff out, get shack out, too baad. Who said life is fair, or has to be?

Hence, when the once glittering, glamorous BBC came knocking on Guyana’s door, I said they must have heard of the nobility and divinity of one Irfaan Ali. Then I remembered with the abruptness of lumber to the head that Guyana has oil, and that there are concerns and questions about the fairness of its revenue distribution. Now that’s my language talking. Talk about fairness and I am singing and writing. And, so were the Guyanese at the actual panel discussion who showed the world how sharply polarised the peoples of this country are. The oil equation is an inequality, a national calamity. The Guyanese who haven’t got their fair share of Guyana’s gushing oil revenues outnumber by leaps and bounds, and outweigh by countless thousands of tons, those who actually got.

There is a new unintended exposure, thanks to the BBC, despite its own twisty and curly nature. There is racial division. There’s political division. Both are older than the Republic. Now, there is the new oil division and money division, with both intensifying the old political and racial divisions that have been Number One hits in this country. Oil and money divisions have since toppled those two from the charts.

Poor Pres. Ali started out with the porous and ended up with the dubious. One Guyana is deader than a doomed dog. BBC World Questions: Guyana buried that six (teen) feet under.

(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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