Local tolerance for bull-a beauty to behold

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

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – Guyanese should get first prize for their tolerance for bull, their bottomless reservoir of docility. And humour. They have grown in those respects relative to their head-of-state. Whatever has taken over his head, the astonishing is what results. Time and place ignored. No matter how sacred. Solemn occasions fall by the wayside. By the time, Excellency Ali gets through with his message, Guyanese are not only left openmouthed. They are left wondering what planet they are on, and what they did to deserve their fate. An encounter with their glorious national leader, Dr. Irfaan Ali. For there is a presidential figure who gets overexcited, goes overboard, and grows increasingly overbearing. Recall what I said about first prize for Guyanese and the basis for that conclusion.

“It is the People’s Progressive Party that has successfully increased the base upon which every worker in this country stands.” And not satisfied with his verbal extravagance, flew all the way to the moon to emphasise his points. “Five years ago, the struggle was for a higher threshold. We delivered. The struggle was for higher salaries. We delivered. The struggle was for a better pension. We delivered.”

An innocent plagued by ignorance would fall for that princely verbal banquet. He or she would believe that the Guyana story began five years ago. Believe that the People’s Progressive Party took money from its loaded coffers (bankrolls from friends) and gifted it to workers and citizens. Higher tax exemptions. Higher salaries. Higher pensions. No question that the PPP Gov’t (government not party) took Guyanese money and parceled it out right back to them.

It is the oil money of the Guyanese people that made higher this and higher that possible. Including that unwanted outside child that the PPP doesn’t want to own up to: higher cost-of-living. What made matters worse, and the president more insufferable (if that can be believed) is that it was a moment on a field seeded by the blood of martyrs. My lord, my God! Talking politics, bigging up oneself, in an hour of pain remembrance, of the great sacrifice made by simple folk, has to be profaning of the highest order. I think so. Profaning at a time that should only be graced with a special spiritual serenity that graces the sacred. The quiet piety such moments deserve. Yes, I know. Water on duck’s back. Throwing pearls in the vicinity of cloven hooves. It requires the gift of powerful conviction that by sheer weight of exposition, the grotesque is savoured as grace-filled. It shouldn’t require a university education to appreciate why I’m so loved by the PPP.

It’s oil that made higher levels in several areas possible. And to cut a fine point on this, what else could the PPP have done with those billions? Build more roads and bridges? Bludgeon the population into starvation? Suffocate poorer Guyanese to a ghastlier death than experienced now? Who would be left to vote? The PPP Gov’t did share. If it was left to the party hounds, Guyanese would have gotten less increases in salaries and pensions than they did. They were nothing to celebrate, anyhow. Extremely skimpy. Conspicuously, in true ‘maagah dawg’ fashion. A lousy $5000 more monthly some years for Guyana’s elderly. Three thousand more take home pay monthly. And that’s what the sacred solemnity of a day to honour genuine martyrs get bruk up fuh! How that doesn’t qualify as a serious crime beats me! At a minimum, whatever Dr. Ali boasts about so smashingly-higher salaries, higher tax thresholds, higher pensions-should all have been double, with some ‘leff leff’ as extras to make life manageable for ordinary Guyanese. Just like the descendants of those desecrated sugar workers.

It’s a mystery how Guyanese swallow Pres. Ali whole and manage to keep him down. Bull sells. All that snow must have wreaked havoc with my head. Made me fond of masqueraders, complimentary to exaggerators, and gracious to pretenders. I am due a nice prize myself.

(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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beauty, docility, GHK Lall, tolerance

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