One Guyana, not at this time Excellency

By GHK Lall

I have some regard for the artistry and acrobatics of President Ali, but encounter difficulty with this ‘One Guyana’ production of which he is so proud.  This has nothing to do with His Excellency, and everything to do with the timing.  By timing, I mean the environment, temperature of the times, and rousing passions all around.  It is all of three strikes, which means that this conception of ‘One Guyana’ is as good as jailed, and in lonely solitary, too.

To clear the air, I like where ‘One Guyana’ could take, but don’t think it can go anywhere.  Not when the President is such a bundle of contradictions.  Here he is over there and elsewhere, hustling to hobble the heroes of a third (or whatever fraction it may be) of the population, but still speaks about ‘One Guyana’ with a straight face.  Good luck, my Lord.  Public service, unions, elected representatives, villages, councils, and more all stripped or suppressed, stand as part of a long evidence trail.  Do I need to say more, notwithstanding how much I like the sound of One Guyana?  Sorry, the optics and echoes are just not that encouraging.  As an aside, there is gas-to-energy, which I could support.  If the Hon Vice President would only come clean, meaning, go beyond his convenient, comforting cover stories about it, I could endorse.  Who wouldn’t want the lights on all the time, and cheaply too?

In America, anybody and anything that has a Confederates speck-flag, street, general-is doomed to the dumpsite, which is in commendable order.  In great Britannica, venerable icons are knocked down, kicked about, condemned to the gutter.  In two words – slavery associations.  Anything with trace elements of old traumas and ancient crimes is history, no matter the degree of charity and other good works done with slave profits, now condemned as the ‘blood money’ penances of the bloodsuckers that left Africa where it is today.  I say Asia also, particularly India for centuries.  It is time I return home.

The problem with ‘One Guyana’ is that the President and his brain trust (low in trust, lesser in the brain department) picked the absolute worst time to dive into his ‘One Guyana’ fabrication.   It should be observed that the President is given the benefit of sincerity and authenticity.  I don’t why, but I want to trust His Excellency on this one about ‘One Guyana’ even as I hope that it is not limited to one people only, and then again only those at the top in buddy-buddy cabals.  Look at what One Guyana collides with, is unable to grapple with on every occasion.

In Guyana, 99.9 percent of one set of people have hard feelings about Burnham.  In the same Guyana, 99.9 percent of another group of people in the Guyana demographic adores the same Burnham.  It is logical to conclude, therefore, that the same citizens who hate Burnham, on the one hand, and the next set of brothers across the fence who cherish his work and memory, on the other, have the sharpest, sickest perceptions of one another.  It is why I have the greatest difficulty appreciating how those two armies in the local space could exist under any tent named ‘One Guyana.’  Remember, this is not so much about the name, but more about the people who are going to coexist under that roof.  If One People, One Nation, One Destiny, in all of their sprawling contours, is not enough to house the rambunctious million in Guyana, then I fail to grasp how the constriction of One Guyana succeeds.  I wish it could, but not when that exists.

For the enlightenment of Excellency Ali, it is obvious that he has enough cash in his hand to buy droves of people, who have no use for him and his maneuvers.  But the President should know he is buying cosmetics, and not loyalists.  Money, jobs, and infrastructure have limited mileage with fanatics, notwithstanding presidential cosmetics.  In the grand time of elections in the hallowed Burnham era, an agricultural proprietor gave his workers some nice rum money, even the liquids.  The proprietor’s gifts were happily accepted, only for the recipients (workers) to drunkenly confess later that they joyfully grabbed the money, but voted for the cup.

With attitudes and actions like those, the President will be disappointed to learn that his overtures with loaded fist buys him some tight smiles, but no more.  There is neither electoral nor philosophical nor racial nor emotional nor social nor environmental bonding and acceptance.  In a thimble, the President gives, the people from the other side receives.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Given the circumstances, it is why I struggle with how this raw, ruptured and roiled society (like never before) stands a chance of being of one vision, one ideology, one ownership, one political leadership, and one national friendship.

The PNC encountered sullen and stoic resistance to its One Guyana equivalent, which was social cohesion.  Amid the profusion of contradictions and confusions (and resulting antagonisms) today from President and company, who is ready to work along with the equivalents of rum, rice, and paltry residuals extended under the One Guyana flag?  He should linger a little longer in social media to get the clearest idea on the likelihood of traction and success of ‘oneness’ in Guyana.  On anything.  The hymns of hate from both sides of the divide are an encyclopedia of all that is wrenched beyond probable repair in this society.  Try telling those PPP and PNC bigots, Guyana’s Klansmen, about oneness and equality and burying the hatchet.  They would, but in the heads of each other.

Sorry, but there is too much self-identification.  The mood and moment are both bad.  No tolerance.  No kindness.  No patience.  No reception to who looks different, who sounds a different theme; or boldly projects a different posture.  And if there is bad history, then oneness on anything is kicked to pieces and scattered all over the place.  I shiver.  Good luck, Excellency.