Dear Editor,
For me, the troubled Berbice Bridge brings some dark sinister truths into sharp relief. It is revealing as to the lengths which the political deceivers and leadership enablers will go to distort and distract in efforts to cover tracks. They do not want any looking back at context and coconspirators; there is careful avoidance of those known minefields. Instead, there is the strident insistence on erecting even more smokescreens through political sausage-making with one desperate messy subterfuge after another. A former bridge master now makes the rounds as loud empty bluff master.
The bridge represented a development that should have been right, except that it has gone horribly wrong. The political deceivers and swindling enablers did set the stage for the dismal realities that unfold today. They arrogated unto themselves the roles of investment banker, outside counsel, management consultant, and all the rest that works well for the benefit of projects and people when employed sensibly. In so doing, yesterday’s leaders prearranged a special syndicate of shadowy money and shadowy men, with outcomes predetermined and settled. This was the Guyanese equivalent of what Wall Street colourfully terms a beauty pageant; here the only contestants were cunningly handpicked for what was a charade; the feeding frenzy of a secretive private predator’s ball it was. A deformity it was then; a yoke it has become now.
Now, listen to the old political sponsors and beneficiaries from back yonder: at the start, it was the sweetening shout of no increase; recently, the bar was raised to the unyielding theatre of no 19 years and no takeover. While, this is a clear-cut case of seeking to be all things to all people, it reminds of that adage about empty barrels…. Methinks that some men doth protest too much…. These are the impressive narratives of the diabolically clever, and the diabolically misleading; as someone shared the other day, they know their target audience. Only the willing gullible and the utterly daft are fooled. As for me, I hear the snarling spitting defiance of cornered political animals.
Increasingly, there is the circus of animals caught in a tightening mesh. What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. There is that leprous word (deceive) yet again. And deceive it was with this Berbice Bridge and everything touched. The financial contagion of a political Hansen’s disease now infects travelers and taxpayers directly and indirectly, compliments of the PPP leadership that, as Lord Byron said, “nursed the pinion that impelled the steel.”. All are contaminated; all sickened. In any other functioning society, the game would be up, and harsh prices extracted. This government has the opportunity to go for the jugular by laying bare the monies, the men, and the machinations in the simplest terms to the country to expose the political architects that has brought one and all to this unforgiving place. This is owed to taxpaying citizens. Not a single vote may be earned; but there would be the psychic satisfaction of pointing out conmen and unfrocking rogues.
Rather strangely, in a country leakier than a cast net, involved impacted parties and their agents are tellingly muted. Matters taken under advisement, I presume. There is acute fear and strong reluctance to draw any attention to selves; such is the unyielding condemnation of stony silence. The people who put in money run for cover.
All of this reiterates for me for the umpteenth time certain things about politics and political leadership in Guyana. It is that political integrity is an oxymoron; and that the enduring essence of leadership moral code is that there is no code. The Berbice Bridge is part of a Guyanese style kabuki dance: much music, many manoeuvres. What a mess! What more waits to wound grievously vulnerable citizens?
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
