Vaya con dios, SN

Mar 16, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

From Shakespeare’s lament in Cymbeline:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Though thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;

Golden lads and girls, all must,

Like chimney sweepers, come to dust

(Kaieteur News) – The life and times of Stabroek News has seen the Pickwickian taken to its extreme. Even its parting of ways and passing into the forlorn twilight. Editorials that offended. Letter writers that raged at imagined putdowns, exclusions. Politicians and their agents who complained about bias. Yet were so silent when the stables that they operated.

They had licence to cavort freely. They couldn’t be more dishonourable, more disgraceful, when fairness was decimated. When statesmanlike maturity was called for, and mellowness should have been the standard to which all aspired, viciousness was found, loved, and became the baseline for greater expressions of more despicable wrongs. Postures that harmed the interests of Guyanese without a voice. Or the courage that these days require. When money is used as weapon to broadside an entity out of existence, democracy has come upon bad times, falls to a foul place.

Guyanese will be fed the fare of DPI, NCN, and others of that putrid ilk. I believe that too much of anything is a bad thing. Missteps such as these remind of historical misjudgments. What accelerated the demise of those with dirty dictatorial tendencies; reduced to dust and pebbles, those addicted to the siren call of complete control. Those who had a wish relative to the presence of SN and its liquidation may find it that all they have achieved is half of a wish; then only the rotted part of it. There will be some version of Stabroek News that is envisioned to do the impossible. That is, what will be SN without being SN.

Become an imitation of what is gone, what is longed for, while blazing a new path. The masters of the Guyana Universe have it right. Digital is the way to go, the place to be. We shall see. The passage of SN may be seen by the powers that be, as one mischievous genie forced back into the bottle. There are other spirits and there is much of the new space in which to roam.

How to manage that, how to put a cap on those heads? History has shown that man is at his most resilient when compelled to improvise. The battle for truth and light, and what is right for Guyanese will have to go on. Without SN; with or without some others. Time will tell whether Guyanese are grovelers, or they are fighters. Risers to a new challenge at hand; and doers in the struggle for the soul of this rich but paralytic nation. There is precedent, for the media was feared before, and squeezed before, and shutout before, right here. The arc of reason, the swing towards justice, takes its own sweet time. But it does gravitate to what is true, noble, upright. Upright men do not fear. Neither their own shadows nor that of others. Those who stand for something different. Something so fair that it has its own transcendent brilliance. Men and women who lie for a living, have no choice but to keep on lying, hiding, squeezing, and seeing enemies everywhere, when none exists. Genuine patriots and democrats have no basis to fear from other patriots and democrats. Their cause is common, and it is also stitched through and through with the grandest of national essences. All else is chaff, the frothy stuff of derided riffraff dismissed without a second thought.

In studying the departure of Stabroek News, it is clear that a nest of vipers has the upper hand currently in this country. Many a strongman thought he had everything under control, under the heel of his boot. Until he found out to his dismay that he didn’t. Take a bow Stabroek News. We will laugh again, but we will never be this bright and young again. It was a life well-lived. Goodbye and good luck. Guyana will go on. I don’t know quite how, as yet. But it will. There’s that tide in the affairs of men. It oftentimes leads to surprising places. The law of the unanticipated at work. From Shakespeare’s Cymbeline to another literary giant, Scotland’s Robert Burns “To a Mouse: the best laid plans of mice and men… Yeah, they often go offline, off the reservation. The unplanned emerges.

(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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