Dear Editor,
I have followed some of Ruel Johnson’s articulations on the Caribbean Press, and the conduct of the principals. His anger is obvious, the agony is there. And through most of the writings, there are the bones ‒ and deep in the marrows ‒ of an omniscient corruption: aggressive, metastasized, undeniable, and incurable. It is this corruption on which I focus today to share a few final words.
What more can be said of corruption and corrupters in Guyana? Do citizens high and low really care any more? Where do the decent, the ethical, and the devout stand on this widespread evil? The answers to these three questions are respectively: nothing can be said; not many care; and fewer still stand anywhere. Not publicly, not honestly. I support these stark beliefs by sharing my experiences related to a book I penned a year ago about corruption in this society. I do so now because there is nothing left to be sold, to avoid claims of promotion. Here is a snapshot of the ugly corruption of character and spirit that accompanied my daring to write about corruption.
Some said I am an angry man; some that I was bitter. Well it is an expensive and risky way to be angry and bitter; but it was the best they had to offer. One with whom I shared a near sacred relationship no longer speaks to me; another betrayed me, while pretending to be a comrade. This is part ‒ only part ‒ of the beguiling lack of forthrightness that was extended; there are others. And all over a book that highlighted my personal journey in the corrupt quagmire of Guyana. Interestingly, no one ‒ not one person ‒ has said that I manufactured or exaggerated anything. Truth can neither be confronted nor denied. But none of the local Bourbons wanted (for their own shallow, warped reasons) to hear, to see, or to read about how crooked and diseased this place really is at the core and along the peripheries. It is embarrassing, it is debilitating, it is even unpatriotic. None of this barrage of self-serving pronouncements and postures could thoroughly conceal their own clandestine (believed) thinking and entanglements; their unease with a provocative outsider; their cringing before inconvenient sordid realities. Who are you to point to the national nakedness! The easiest path is to damn the messenger, especially an un-pedigreed one; thus, the message is dismissed no matter how harrowing. Mr Johnson is finding this out in different ways through different people.
There were multiple instances detailed of corruption in the public service realm; others at the individual level. And all as experienced firsthand. While there were different characters involved, there was a similarity ‒ indeed, a unanimity ‒ of thinking and conduct, all obscene. By any yardstick – statistical, environmental, political ‒ multitudes of Guyanese endure some aspect of my stories daily. Mr Johnson wrote about it in literature; Mr Alexander in counting; and Mr Ram in business. These are the more public expressions, and representative of the tip of the tip. The tip of the tip only…
From my perspective, the issue is no longer how low a nation can sink (new depths are now routinely reached), but how much it accepts and likes where it has found itself. For all intents and purposes, corruption must now rank as nationally concerning as jaywalking, and slightly below littering, regardless of the untold millions involved. Still too many are content ‒ determined ‒ to sit on conscience, to fold hands. The prevailing spirit is whispered fear, and a palpable mendacity in the increasingly dismal phantasmagoria of a state called Guyana.
Along the way, I have discovered that it is inaccurate to say that citizens are two-faced or bipolar. With rare exceptions, Guyanese are multipolar and can have four faces on any single issue. First is the public countenance for the record; second is the visage shared with the closed intimate circle; third is that personal disguise known to self only, and not shared with anyone; and the fourth face is still personally unknown, but is ready to be adapted and finalized to satisfy the demands of the moment.
This is but an incomplete recapture of the massive sweep of deception and malaise now so characteristic, so deeply ingrained here. We are so good and practised at this, that we even fool ourselves. Just ask the names mentioned earlier.
Where do we go from here? I do not know. I seek no answers any more. Perhaps I don’t care as much as before.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
