Dear Editor,
Thanks to the media and the mostly underground Christopher Ram, Guyanese have a new conundrum with which to grapple. It is best presented to the public as christened: “excess of timelines for flaring events.” Even I have to pause, and tread gingerly around this Kissingerian construction, this Machiavellian monstrosity that could lay waste to any interpretation. This is reminiscent of Guyana’s constitutional morass that, if permissible, it would have limped its way to the august CCJ for some final sagacious adjudication. Whatever that concoction means, this is where all of my positions terminate: it is of the tangled webs that we weave, when we practice to deceive.
It has been deception upon deception, and as the erudite and patiently probing accountant cum attorney-once omnipresent, now a pale faded shadow of himself-revealed: that insult and embarrassment of a US$30 fine per ton is ultimately paid by Guyanese. Because I feel politically charitable today, I will volunteer something publicly. That stupidity of a fine, so meaningless as to be useless and pointless, is so dirt cheap, that I am thinking of paying for it. But because I think so poorly of the ethics of the PPP government and its leaders, disbursement would be to some private charitable organization. That way government and leaders can’t get their hands on the money, even on something so tiny; it is my conclusion of how low they would sink.
Editor, to levy a fine of US$30 (GY$6000) per ton on Exxon for whatever that phrase quoted above means and whenever it applies (if it ever does) to a corporate powerhouse like Exxon has to be the source of unending derisive laughter in the corridors of Exxon. A double shot of Johnnie Walker Blue costs more on the expense accounts of its top executives, who must be even more convulsed with laughter at how incurably mentally defective (worse than lazy) Guyanese are. Unfortunately, that means all of us, including yours truly. Whether I like it or not, I find myself lumped with all these political halfwits, and the national parade of dimwits. It is the price paid for yearning to be here. I call it diaspora decompression.
But US$30 a ton conveys that we have no shame, not a speck of pride or self-respect left. There is no deterrent present there; it definitely lacks any element of what could be considered punitive. It is more rehabilitative and conducive to a continuation of reckless ways by a feckless American corporate superpower. It is an invitation to flare more. Perhaps, that is what that “timelines” business is about; how to flare at will, while the mudheads try to find their feet.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall