Earthquakes after earthquakes

Jul 19, 2026 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall…

(Kaieteur News) – Venezuela had one earthquake, then more. Death and destruction on a wide scale. I shrink from forces larger than life, bigger than man. Guyanese were in the middle of one earthquake, when another crashed down on their heads. Seems like more than one. Political earthquakes rattling the towers of Guyana, rocking ground floors. Venezuelans braved the battering. Fought to rescue survivors. Picked up the pieces shattered and scattered all over. Guyanese from the highest political elevations to the bottom of the national ladder run for cover. There is considerable screaming here. Some feeble attempts at salvaging lost causes. A country imperiled. Leadership besieged. The Palace Guard form a circle. To protect what? An empty palace? A poisoned chalice?

An account that’s bigger than the accumulation of assets. Opulence. Vehemence. Last, violence. Inflicted on the already roach-infested, rat-gnawed, national conscience. One disclosure about storybook meadows, cows that bellow, loud echoes that ring hollow. The first earthquake shaking the foundations. Hair standing on end. Lips quivering. Mouths dribbling. It’s that see-sawing, buckling, moment that signals an earthquake in full swing and rugged form. Before there could be that proverbial, eerie, hush after an earthquake, another competed for expression, catapulted into Guyanese consciousness.

I heard some strangled, wheezing, gurgling sounds. Murderer. Kidnapper. Torturer. All alleged. Those were all suspected at different times by different Guyanese groups. In a sense, news as ancient as Ole Higue and Dutch Maan and others of that grim netherworld pantheon. Why now? Only now? It had to take a vulgar, vicious, public political brawl to blow the lid off from this political triangle. One now exposed in all its ugly naked pretensions. One revealing its monstrous disfigurements. Like the good and faithful partner in this love triangle gone haywire, the Guyanese people are the last to know.

Murderer. Torturer. Kidnapper. Is somebody kidding? Where were those all the time? Why were they hidden? Apparently, condoned and protected? Can’t be. Not when Guyana’s most celebrated town marshal hyperventilates about law, rule of law, respect for law. And laws paramount, not men. What else was covered up, immunised, is living a charmed existence? Imagine these Richter scale upheavals shaking Guyana. These are not aftershocks. These are an abortion, a premature birth, and a stillbirth all rolled into one. Weigh this: fellow citizens: A couple of cows, a few sheep, maybe a giraffe and a zebra could link horns and hooves. They serve as the smoking guns that lead to the trail of murder, assorted mayhem, and a political massacre in the making. Guyana shouldn’t be in the Guiness Book of Records. Guyana belongs in Vincent Price’s House of Horrors. Take a seat Madame Tussaud. Talk about timing. Talk about sequence. I did both.

And, just when Guyanese thought that the shakes from the local political earthquakes were over, another national structure collapsed on their heads. A suspect was found and bound for a murder that is five years old. The wheels of justice, its arc, are truly revolutionary. Ah, the timing! Oh, the sequence! I wonder what Guyana’s Joe Don Baker (Sheriff “Walking Tall”) has to pontificate about all this in his efforts to exonerate. Probably, long planned. Like parliament reconvening. Probably, was always in mind. With finger on the trigger and waiting to be pulled. Not in March, 2021. Not 2022. Not 2023. I forgot how the Chinese labelled 2024. Must have been the Year of the Snake. Blackballing and treachery abounding. Friends fed to the dogs. Now a man in the lockup as part of this political bruk up.

The Americans have a nugget: when things are too pat, somebody gat snat pun deh nose. Snot leaking from their nose, past mouth, beyond neck, an all over their shirtfront. Easy to interpret. Easier to present in standard English: Guyanese behold! The political-commercial-legal-financial complex undressed and in full jiggle. Earthquakes of any kind, particularly politically powerful ones, lead to this kind of thrashing about.

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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earthquakes, GHK Lall, rescue survivors, Venezuela

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