Sanctity of contract - at its gut

Sanctity of contract – at its gut

May 24, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – I must be franker than usual with my fellow Guyanese. Whenever I hear three words in the hallowed English Language I cringe. They are not ‘I love you.’ The three words that cause considerable unease are sanctity of contract. Hence, I must be even bolder in today’s public sharing of what I think sanctity of contract indicated, now represents. A word of caution: partisans are not going to like what they read, where it traps them, how it makes them look. This is regretted, but there’s no other choice.

Plain and simple, I think that sanctity of contract in the tricky context of Guyana’s oil speaks to politicians surveying the battlefield, and upon recognizing the dangers ahead, their knees shake. There’s flinching. Fear’s stalking shadow overwhelming them. Sanctity of contract ties to the weakest vantage point possible -no escape route. Bluntly, when the hard, grim, unyielding face of the battleground to be traveled was detected, faces were turned. Backs were turned. There was turning against the instinct in the brave to stand ground and fight. No turning and walking away. No turning to seek refuge, no turning to comfort oneself, within the leaky shelter of sanctity of contract. I am putting this kindly: sanctity of contract doesn’t give an alibi. It hangs an albatross on the owner. It’s the burden and curse that must be carried. One that, like Sisyphus and his boulder, is forever, unless the gods favor with relief.

Who wants to call out their senior citizens? Count me out. But there is a duty bigger than pleasing anybody in this country. I have been here before: elections 2020, having to tell publicly another set of folks that the battle was lost, the day was done, it was over. Wasn’t easy, wasn’t well-received. But had to be lived, regardless.

Now, when there has to be standing and fighting, there’s shrinking from laying all on the line, fighting with face set like steel, and thrusting at this country’s adversary. In my thinking, it is better to carry the fight to opponents, and fall face forward in battle (if such has to be), than to beat the hastiest retreat, and surrender more than the precious yardage of inviolable territory. It is to surrender one’s right to any last vestige of self-respect, of being treated as an equal, of being honored as a worthy foe.

In fact, Americans carry a proud lineage; a warrior ethos. There is respect, however grudging, for one who relinquishes ground after exhausting all energies. After utilizing all armaments. And after exploring all the power that the mind can harness, then unleashing the same in withering, concentrated fire against what threatens, what could undermine not just today. But the way of life of generations to come. Sanctity of contract sacrifices all those noble components on the altar of dread, of the calculating, because it has potential to be most costly. When a man resolves to live in anxiety and impotency today, he has condemned himself to an eternity of anxiety and impotency. Those become the central pillars of his urine-drenched, rat-gnawed, destiny. It doesn’t matter who it is, the toll is unsparing, cannot be passed onto others.

When sanctity of contract is absorbed, and given the carnage inflicted by those three words, three thousand curses erupt uncontrollably from deep inside. If Guyana’s flag carriers will not stand and fight Texas, what chance (after all the loud oaths made) of standing and fighting against Caracas? When the will to resist injustice, and the will to right wrongs, has taken flight, then there is only one way left. The way of serfs and vassals, of those paying homage to the boot. From top to bottom, every citizen, all should examine and reexamine sanctity of contract, and see where they arrive, if not exactly as I labeled. Whenever I encounter sanctity of contract now, my first thought is of double-cross.

(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 Oil, sanctity of contract

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