Political dismantling

May 12, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – Piece by piece. Layer after layer. Guyanese are closeup eyewitnesses of political dismantling in action. What used to be precious, had to be protected, is now stripped and savaged, then sent naked into the world. Friendship curdled. Like milk, down the drain it goes. Hands washed.  Distance kept. What follows is all natural, nothing artificial. Let’s go. There’s work to do. Parting the curtains, pushing through the webs, so after painful steps Guyanese see light’s slivers. How their country works. How rotten, rancid, their heroes are. Of what’s a scientific dismantling of edifices built and cherished. Of what is done with mathematical political precision. When the spirit moves, that flame burns, is restless for expression.

There was a time, an endless season, when the law couldn’t be broken. Even when some tried, actually did. There was no law. None found. None that applied. Nor men that cared hard enough to look deep enough and stand tall enough. If this is too fancy, too bad. Get used to it.  A man could commit murder in this burg, and it didn’t matter. A man could laff at the law, and it didn’t mean one damn thing. There was the guarantee of powerful friends, great defenders, the most voluminous, raucous well-wishers. Who would mess with that combination, dem kine ah peeple? Certainly, not I. Oh, there was money to make things happen. Anything. Regular citizens waited in line, counted themselves lucky when they weren’t thrown out the line.  Supplicants for a right of citizenship, only for that to be determined by those in uniforms, and those with high seats in high offices.

Thus, the law rendered impotent, inapplicable, insipid. The law rules. Look at who intones what that rule represents, and on whom it is enforced. It was a grand time then, and a grander one today. From great heights, the great men of this country looked on, looked out for, and knew when to look the other way. It was inevitable that the latter became every day. Fortress walls secure in their ability to withstand the pounding of time, overcome local noise, until the ships of another state came over the horizon. Now it’s every man for himself. Some women got their fingernails chipped. Ruff company, it is. I scan the landscape. Where’s everybody? Those who collected money. Those who received lavish donations. Those at rare elevations, who swore to friendship’s lifelong fraternity. Where are they? My own echoes only heard. Have mostly my own company. When storms rage, even the strong seek shelter. The stupid gene came effortlessly to me.

First, all the friends with stars and stripes forgot former good times. Constant mantras: I know not the man. Some got brave, got packed off and pushed out. Second, the men and women who enjoyed celebratory moments and taking pictures with their then loaded friends, now carefully rearrange their faces, and wring their hands: the horror, the abominations. Woe is me.  It’s more of woe is he. Third, one tool, one asset, one resource, after another stripped or seized.  One friend gone, then another, until there is no other. The only friends left, if they can be called such, are regional, then farther. Whether 1956 or 2026, nothing has changed, especially the constancy of alien control. The latter posse of friends waits, certain in the power of its position, its reach, and those whose fate it controls. Guyanese history on a memory stick. A new era, same ole times.

In daytime, nighttime, they now come to collect, to corner those for whom they once came down hard on others. Private institutions, public institutions, political institutions, all in perfect alignment. An awesome, peculiar manmade eclipse in action. This stopped, that taken, things blocked, movements watched, people restricted, and always a sword dangling overheard.  Make wrong move, taste the power of the strong. It is 2026, not 1984. Today, I do the counting.  I watched those who could do no wrong, who now can’t do one thing right. Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, washed his hands. Guyana’s governors wash their hands, wash their mouths.  Before, they washed their clothes. The alphabet people have their own political detergent, arithmetic.

Dismantling. Diminishing. Disgracing by dragging through mud and filth. Somehow nothing sticks to those doing the dragging. The Red, White, and Blue people definitely have a precision by which they wage their wars, engulf their allies. Who is playing whom? Think of those playing Guyanese for fools. Rule of law. Nobility of purpose. Try democracy of the dirty. Involved.  Tainted. Immunized. For now. Oil’s power transcends money. It paralyzes politics, transforms politicians into reprobates, and reduces the people to helpless, inconsequential bystanders.

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, Political dismantling

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