Mediocre Guyana had to produce Johnny Welshman Jr.
When you look at the abysmal intellectual, legal and social standards in Guyana that stretch back about fifteen years ago, Johnny Welshman Jr. was inevitable. Unless this country enters the modern world with modern people, modern infrastructure and modern values, more like Welshman will drop on Guyana’s soil like mangoes on a farmers’ estate.
This country has lost all its standards in every realm of life. Every Smart Alec believes he can delude this society. Many are doing it and some are getting away with it. To date, only Vishnu Bisram has been caught. And Bisram got away with his artistry for over five years.
That is a long time to manipulate a country, but Bisram did it for five years. Today he is banished to the letter sections of the respected two dailies – KN and SN – with his fake polls and fake polling organization. You may dislike Bisram, but you must acknowledge that he was no fool. Bisram knew Guyana and he knew he could successfully pull off his stunts.
The same goes for David Casavis. The Casavis book on the Thomas Carroll affair at the US Embassy was a new low in the de-edification of this comical, yet tragic land. Casavis knew Guyana, so he figured he could get Guyanese to read a badly researched book and Guyanese will jump to get it. And Casavis was right. People who knew nothing about the Thomas Carroll scandal loved Casavis’ book. Casavis was laughing at them, because he knew his book didn’t inform Guyanese about ninety percent of the things Carroll admitted to doing in this intellectually barren land.
Someone like Shaun Samaroo laughs at this country. Like Bisram and Casavis, he knows he can pull off his game and he has pulled it off. Writing as someone who wants to see a better and united Guyana with strong moral values, he urges all and sundry to recapture the greatness that was once Guyana, but he openly practices a sickening form of political opportunism and passes it off as independent thought and he gets through.
Mr. Samaroo had the gall to describe Ministers Priya Manickchand and Frank Anthony as the only two persons who can secure a future for Guyana. He actually said the future of Guyana rests in their hands. Mr. Samaroo overlooked the honesty of someone like David Granger, the brilliant Nigel Hughes, the nationalistic Khemraj Ramjattan and the evergreen Moses Nagamootoo.
Samaroo finds a job at the Chronicle where he carries on a smear campaign against the PNC. But in a mediocre society, he knows he can play his cards badly, yet win. The Stabroek News is impressed with Samaroo so he is made a columnist, the same way Abu Bakr in France and our own Ralph Ramkarran are impressed with Vishnu Bisram.
What a country Guyana is. We read what Ralph Ramkarran writes, but this same man served the PPP for fifty years and to date has not written one word about why he left. Ramkarran knows only in Guyana can such a thing happen, because a weak, dried-up nation doesn’t question anything at all. The Stabroek News is impressed with Dr. Henry Jeffrey, so like Samaroo, they made him a columnist.
Like Ramkarran, we read Jeffrey, but Jeffrey served the PPP Government for eighteen years (my God that is a long time) and has not written even one line as to the things he saw inside the empire when he was part of it. Jeffrey is a trained academic, so he knows the extent to which Guyana has become a stupid country.
And finally, Johnny Welshman Jr. There is so much talk about Welshman being mad. But there is method to the madness. If there is any country Welshman knows he can pull off his grand scheme of invented scandals, it is Guyana. He tried “sexgate” in Trinidad, but it didn’t work. Welshman operates in the opposite manner to the Midas touch. Everything Welshman touches turns to waste matter, but he gets attention in the media and he loves it.
Welshman even got the police to take him seriously. They spent fuel and manpower on his enjoyable escapades. They took him to the Linden Highway to conjure up the things in his imagination. The things in Welshman’s imagination, he says are real events. And the society turns Welshman’s phantasmagoria into news for the very society to digest.
Yesterday it was Bisram and Casavis. Today it is Samaroo, Ramkarran, Jeffrey and the boy in Stephen King’s novel, Johnny Welshman Jr. Who will come tomorrow and fool a mediocre nation that has lost its sense of time and place?
