Time to remember
DEAR EDITOR,
It’s been a memorable year, and not for inspirational reasons. As I contemplate Guyanese visions and practices, there will be no comment on what went wrong, only where we are ready to launch ourselves into the unknown. Even if I seem a little unlucky, I urge you to look beyond, to appreciate the possibilities, including a warning or two.
We have democracy. Whether a dollar-specific democracy or an electoral democracy with hidden foreign objectives is paramount or a border democracy with the same country target in mind, we have what many Guyanese are happy to revel in as a terminal .
The journey, which hasn’t really begun, is already over: we celebrate a desperate mission accomplished; only American sponsors can make such a mission impossible.
Now, all of Guyana is a cavort to oil democracy. I warn that he is not egalitarian.
I note that the coalition has realized that, and has adapted with time to ensure the presence of sharing arrangements at the banquet table.
It only took a shadow under the three biblical and ten score, but we have the traps for what constitutes a unity government. Well, as I interpret matters, a unity government in terms of political oil fairness. To my fellow citizens, I say: believe that dollars have been shared, promises made, fostering cooperation. For that, we must give a round of applause to the wisest political figure in this hemisphere. He is neither the official leader of the land nor Chavez or Maduro to counter tidal and capitalist terrorists.
Here is a man, though, who knows his opponents; those he cannot overcome, he bows low.
While with those he can buy, he spends luxury. It is a price of dissemination and silence.
From this, we have partnership and inclusion at the highest levels in Guyana’s elite political circle, which has no racial divide.
In the long rush of events, I regret that they forgot to send the confirmation memo to enlighten fans; nearly seventy years later, the Jagan-Burnham split is nothing more. At least, not in the political penthouses. I join in the celebrations, with one difference: my pennies are hard earned and honestly collected; Guyanese hopes are not squashed.
In fairness, citizens, praised by a compassionate president, got a finger on some ovens: $ 25,000 in cash COVID-19, reduced fat on VAT, and various circuses by Guyana’s equivalent of Roman emperors.
The people are happy, and I love them, too, because they get to express how much they love to hate it.
As has been said, it has been a memorable year, with money coming and cascading in endless torrents: most borrowed, the rest under the radar. Citizens are grateful, as are the dogs around Lazarus for the leftover leftovers. No one should complain.
We have a memorable leader: newly re-engaged with American ingenuity and Guyanese pluralism.
He is the Guyanese man for all seasons, with a plethora of words to fit each one.
I’m jealous. He has learned to tell the people what they want to hear, and stop there: transparency, accountability, unity. It is folly to go beyond, as in fulfillment.
Things are so much smoother and soothing in this society that even the co-president of a certain mind-cum oil minister has embraced the lesson that honey is better than vinegar; he is a ghost in search of a resident “jumbie”.
It took us over 50 years, then 19 months, and the last 5 months, but we’ve come to appreciate the Western way and the White man’s world in getting things done. This is all memorable; for here, we are on the threshold of greatness, and the wisdom comes to find what is needed to remake the Guyanese world order.
I look at the private sector in 2020 – the same dirty money, the clean ones who fight to embed money and questionable relationships – and gain an understanding of the many chameleons in this country, who sacrifice through commercial temporarily surrendered, so that the political can defeat. I find short-term strings for an ongoing long-term
prosperity.
I’ll take some land to develop, or some mine to expand. I wonder what the American and European agents (FinCen, DEA, Interpol, and others) think of all this, where they stand today in this new democracy that their elders were calling us.
Meanwhile, the little people are hoping and praying for more grandeur from the men they supported and promoted.
It boils down to the disadvantages of this: spare some money for the poor. The rest they can keep for themselves.
They will, and it will account for what they have already purged for themselves of the American commercial interests that now govern here. For the foreseeable future, the standards of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act have been omitted. As I said: a memorable time, it has been. It will remain, as there is much to be thrilled about. Merry Christmas and more of the same in the new year.
Correctly,
Lall GHK