Dear Editor,
I look and listen, and as I learn, I arrive at a sad place, a bad place. It is that elections season in Guyana is this happiest of times, this glorious bacchanal of sound and energy, of positions and propaganda, of business and cash registers ringing merrily and near continuously. I always thought that Christmas was the biggest and happiest time in Guyana, a month-long celebration of tradition, preparation, and participation. I was wrong.
Elections time is it and hands down by a wide country margin. I open the two newspapers of choice, be it online or on paper, and there is joy for Stabroek News and Kaieteur News: their cup overfloweth with the torrents of financial joy. The evidence of elections cascades is there in black and white and many times in expensive colour also. It is not of mere pages, but of centre pages, and double-sided, too. There are those weekly oil wells of advertising bounties from Gecom and coalition and opposition parties in what could be whole newspapers by themselves; there are also those sizable unidentified “paid for” public announcements. Let the joy ring out in February; there is space, there is readiness to receive whatever comes along the way. Those mandatory (I think) government expenditures could fill a small size rural library between now and March 2nd. Nobody is complaining, with lack of column inches forgotten, and sleeves rolled up to count the cash coming in so abundantly. At this time, there are no days off, even sick leave is cancelled and considered unhealthy.
I take amused looks, and there they are. It is where the two main political parties are trying to outdo each other with “fact sheets” and projections and exposé and excoriations of the records of each other. There is the feel of the ancient Roman Senate in full Cataline and Ciceronian flourish (without the singular eloquence); there is also the feel of modern Guyanese parliamentary proceeding in gaudy vulgar disarray. It is one grand circus of which the debauched Latin emperors of old would have been proud. I love it.
Then, there are the party decorations and campaign exhibitions. It is the Saturday before the Republic Day weekend, and the street is a mass of musical madness, a fevered crush of bodies gyrating behind crawling trucks blaring from monstrous speakers and their indecipherable lyrics of dubious quality. I am sure the two local phone companies lost some money during the festivities, since nobody is using up expensive cellphone minutes. They couldn’t even if they wanted to: too much earsplitting decibels, too many simultaneous sources of what I am compelled to call music but may as well be the production of creatures from another galaxy. The words sometimes filter feebly past the overpowering accelerated drumbeats. It is a spectacular in February, and the only things missing are some people to throw to the lions, so that the latter can have a feast, as part of the elections culture.
I suppose the lions will have to bide their time to until after March 2nd, when the fleshpots of Guyana will be made available by the winners in hysterical celebratory mode, when the floodgates of uninhibited consumption will be allowed to take hold. Of course, I do hope that it is understood that the losers are who will serve as breakfast and lunch for the lions. They will be too stuffed to respond to the dinner bell. I love it. What is there not to love about all of this!
As I paused to take a quick peek at some of the passing elections crowd, there they were, the heavy contingents of the very young, as in those in the lower teens, most likely not eligible voters in what this year more than the usual Republic Day spirit; the scent of elections is mistakable. How can there not be, since this is what almost all are obsessed with and in which immovably engaged? It is a real fun time out there in the scorching Guyanese sun for the children: no books, no lessons, no tension, only the revelry of the lime of Mash.
So, there it is: everybody is happy and deliriously so, be they adults or school aged children. Be they private citizens or private businesses. Be they political parties or their diehard political loyalists. This is the life. Why bother with reality! Who cares about sanity and civility? Who has time for reserve and restraint? Not when the road march of elections time
Is the happiest of happy hours in this country. I love it.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
