Dear Editor,
Nine months ago, 750,000 Guyanese lived for a single reason only: victory. I think it is not an overstatement to articulate that that all-consuming fixation existed for 26 endless months. Today, I look, I listen, and I learn that we know of nothing else, really don’t care about those compulsory elements that make electoral victory worthwhile.
Today, I unflinchingly say that there are extremely few Guyanese, who care about the architecture surrounding victory and its related democracy. I speak of racial harmony (who is there?). I identify political, leadership, and governance integrity (who gives a damn!). I mention social tranquility (who raises hands?). There is neither newborn nor nonagenarian that can be stirred to make those the pinnacles of their priorities. Our fundamentalist passions are not in such directions. Nonetheless, speak to any Guyanese, and nearly all 750,000 will swear forever that they are about truth, reconciliation, unity; oh, they are also about individual dignity and leadership morality and decency. We have practiced deceits so well, that we are now perfect at them; so impeccably self-schooled at deviousness that we even deceive ourselves.
Listen to PPP supporters about president, Vice President, quite a few of the ministers, and handpicked public service commissars, and one is treated to 60-minute CDs. The mindless reflexive retorts are best summed up like this: dem bin duh moh baad. Do the same with opposition loyalists relative to opposition leader, brain trust, extended cohort of insiders, and the same symphony set in stone flares: wha bout dem wen deh did bin in deh…? That is the entirety of the universe of the democracy and national value system that dominate here; this is where all the blabber about moral, ethical, and transformational leadership-trustworthy and honorable leadership-climaxes.
I despair for where we are heading as a society; that is, if we are heading anywhere newer or higher or better, at all. Not as this or that party, but as a society, a national polity. I read and hear of men and women making paramount the prizes (and perils) of oil, expectancies about potential prosperity, and stewardship of natural resources. Those are both thrilling and disillusioning, because they have been and are in the wrong hands, with the wrong kinds of minds leading the way. There is only so much that can be had and used for any purpose, at any one time or in the aggregation of a lifetime. And yet, there is raking numbing greediness and acquisitiveness. Sanctity of conscience is a commercial found contemptible; and so, too, is government truly for the people, and probing for the essence of what the national character is, the breadth of individual Guyanese philosophy.
Editor, we could eventually own the highest global per capita standing; but if we have lost our heads to this extent (over race, politics, crude oil), then that stupendous arithmetical height is all but meaningless. Healing, mending, truth-seeking, reconciling, honorable leading, conscientious calling out, where are they? Of what use are those?
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
