June 1 ,2020
Dear Editor,
At the end of this writing, I would have fewer friends left, and the prospect of less well-wishers. But to shrink from what must be done is tantamount to the yellowest cowardice. Thus, it shall be written, regarding the truths now confirmed in the ongoing drama of Guyana’s elections. The personal roads will lead to wherever they culminate and conclude.
First, I detect that the opposition PPP lacks the cojones to stand up, face the music to the end, and carry its weight all along. The party, its pathetic leaders, and their surrounding casts talk a loud game, but do not have what it takes to walk upright proudly on their own strength. It is skilled in slick stratagems; but is unnerved by the requirements, the sacrifices, that are essential components of any victory to be earned. Thus, it depends on foreign legions to rescue it from the fights it picks.
Second, I observe the foreign brigade, as spearheaded by fellow Americans, allowing itself to be suckered into going overboard over a purely domestic matter, without any sensible Plan B strategy, which allows dignified withdrawal from what has now assumed underpinnings of diplomatic McCarthyism. When the diplomatic community is numbered among the louder voices in the local milieu, then it is recognition and admission that Guyanese have neither pride nor wherewithal left to deal with our challenges on our terms on our own turf.
Third, and far more deplorable, are my fellow Guyanese in the PNC folds, who have, once again, exhibited chronic predispositions towards perversities in things electoral, through mediations on the art of dissembling narratives and discounting votes. Like a sick addict and serial defrauder, its leading powers, higher circles, and broader followers just cannot help themselves; hence, the proverbial wisdom of the dog that returneth to its own vomit, being like the fool that returneth to his follies. I had harboured some hopes (customary skullduggeries acknowledged), but what is happening daily crushes the cake into caca.
I hear about dead bodies; I say rebury them. I hear about overseas voters; I say excise them from consciousness. It is hard to say, and though traumatic, it is time to move on, and cease with more of these forlorn and pitiful Indian rope tricks.
Fourth, the private sector is too populated with persons working against the best interests of this nation for the sordid personal benefits of particular members. They have lost any inclinations or impulses towards the neutral, the objective, the national, and the patriotic. Their public positions and covert ambitions are reminiscent of those decades-old AFL-CIO recruits from this same troubled land, who came back and wasted one Cheddi Jagan, and left the unhealable heart of Guyana in their wake and its current state. The characters of today are neither principled nor patriotic. They are only cheap buyers and sellers of political favors; they position for what they hope will feather their mildewed nests.
Fifth, well-regarded sections of the independent media sacrificed standing and reputation at the altar of political allegiance. They stand besmirched, they may never recover to the heights of former prestigious perches. Then again, this society is so fickle and infantile, and its mores and memories are built on such sandy and marshy territory that their prejudiced exploits may not matter at all. This is Guyana, and of this place, there is no close equivalent.
Sixth, I think that GECOM should be outlawed and condemned to outer darkness, never to reemerge in the same texture nor be restored via any similar construct. I am uncertain on what any replotted architecture should be like, especially when the many so-called constitutional loyalists are so much a part of the incorrigible white-collar criminal class. This entity is a metaphor for the tragicomic ruinous.
And last, as for me, I have stained myself indelibly by being unwise enough to be too close to the profane and the personally diminishing by contributing, listening, exchanging, and bloody well just thinking about all that is so deforming and devastating about this country and its visions.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
