Anxieties over antics around BBC progamme

Mar 21, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – Some critical expressions have been published about how Guyanese comported themselves during the BBC’s panel discussion at the Pegasus.  Not unfounded, nor unreasonable, I say.  What is unreasonable is that such assaults, antics, were unanticipated.  When the government machinery has long performed in a flouncing, uncaring, way, nothing else should be expected.  The record is there.  The history is long.

The road traveled littered with craters and cesspools into which men and women plunge with complete abandonment, utter recklessness.  Exxon’s Alistair Routledge deserves every penny that he gets from Guyana’s oil, because his stomach is so strong, his nose so insulated, his mind now so numbed from dealing with PPP Govt. stalwarts.  When such a sordid record has been compiled in the past, the BBC was just another opportunity for political nudism to run rampant.

As the head goes, so does the rest of the body.  Checkout one leader who moves like a coiled spring.  Push a button, and the gates of rage are unleashed.  Wanna mess wid me!  C’mon, bring it on!  So that’s what to expect.  Then, there is another leader, but still THE leader [though backburnered], whose trail of explosives over the years at all hours and in all forums would make the Strait of Hormuz look like Lake Placid.  Or, to push the envelope, the Ganges.  Laak ah keep sayin’, like papa, like pickney.  That is what to expect, to extol, the record that’s loved.  Has it not been so, my fellow Guyanese?

I pity US Ambassador, Excellency Nicole D. Theriot.  She has no choice but to deal with the whole pack of them.  Memorial Day and Independence Day are on the calendar.  Imagine having to entertain and accommodate those kinds of folks under one’s roof.  A good thing that she is from Louisiana.  The spices from there should have conditioned her well, bring out the best in expansive diplomatic condescension for her undesired, but compulsory, guests.  Interests and business determine such welcoming postures.  I emphasize that, for I have had to deal with family of that quality.

The point is when self-respect and profoundness drip slimily, then the putrid and profane ascends.  The BBC team must have been wondering: is this what oil does to people?  And, who are these people?  And, what to do with them?  The BBC itself is no bouquet of violets, but to have been eyewitnesses to the PPP Govt. in full battle cry must qualify as immensely tragic, of appalling proportions.  I recall the legends of Guyanese miners striking it big in the goldfields, then celebrating their good fortune by lighting up large currency notes to search for smaller dollar bills.  Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?  I think so.

I say also that those whom the gods wish to drive insane, then don’t first make them mad.  They give them oil to get the dirty job done.  The oil devours and drowns them.  The BBC saw that firsthand.  Why should the gods sully their hands to save them?  Give a poor man a penny and a prince he becomes.  Give disturbed men drops of sense, and they believe they’re wiser than Solomon.  Is that not what is going on in Guyana, Oil Dorado Guyana?  Oil has Guyanese primed for battle, ready to kill one another.  In the domestic trenches that’s the norm.  Before a foreign setting, that is for the consumption of foreign audiences, the same shabby standards dominate.  What’s now national political and social culture is taken still lower, where the raucous and rambunctious enjoy unchallenged supremacy.  It is PPP Govt. territory.  When leaders make that culture their modus operandi, the others can’t be blamed.  There are only following the leader(s).

The flock of foreign investors waiting to touchdown here, must be drooling, Guyana is a walkover.  The government walks over citizens, so it will be a piece of cake to walk in and walkover them all, from leaders to followers.  They are too busy fighting each other, trying to bring each other down. What happened before the BBC was believed to be a distraction from fair distribution and how cost-of-living is killing rank-and-file Guyanese, when they are heralded as among the richest globally.  Ugly displays are now part of the national exhibitionisms. Rather than distracting, more attention was drawn.  The PPP Govt. has secrets that must remain hidden.

(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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• Alistair Routledge, BBC, Exxon, GHK Lall, PPP

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