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Kaieteur News – First, here is a confession to my fellow citizens. Every now and again, I pause and ponder public pronouncements of Guyana’s Hon. Attorney General, Mr. Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, MP, and so on and so forth. For the record, the AG is intriguing in his oral pirouettes, and rhetorical thunder; truth be told, Mr. Nandlall is better entertainment than Excellency Ali and the mighty VP. More pointedly, this erudite Guyanese surrendered all rights to speak for Guyanese when he joined with Exxon and went against his own people. When Guyanese needed a valiant kshatriya, the pathetically cowardly was theirs.
On the issue of consensus, a burning one, in Guyana, the AG was up in arms and all slash and trash, bash and mash. He rocked whoever pays attention to him, with flights about “formulations” and “permutations” and argumentations”, in the firm belief that some are impressed. Not I, sire. But, there is gratitude that Senior Counsel Nandall did not treat us to the delights of ‘adumbrations’ or ‘maladministration, and other perversions”, in his lofty verbal ‘peregrinations,’ fulminations, and panegyrics. A good actor is this brother.
Consensus is what we need, and consensus is what we don’t have; some seemingly are dead set against it, will not allow one whiff of breath, or consideration. So then, being the man of logic and reasoning that he is, I inquire of lawmaker and senior barrister, lawyer, and solicitor, and counselor (all roll into one here, aren’t they?) from here to where? Again: from here to where, sir? The PPP can overcome its bitter memories and pervasive hatreds of America (Down with America, that decades long passionate chant) and capitalism (down…ah, why even bother), but the rage from the 1950s and 60s, and as refueled now by the 2020s, is inexhaustible and, more poignantly, inextinguishable. In fairness and for balance, which I recommend to Mr. Nandlall to try sometime in his multifaceted capacities of attorney, minister, and citizen and a man, the PNC has also been about the dogged and same devastating rage that tears country and peoples into fragments. One Black face in the PPP and one Indian presence in the PNC, will only get us so far, which is nowhere. The AG knows this, all of it.
He also knows that it is playing with the nuclear trigger when short thrift is given to calls for consensus. Okay, there were no calls for consensus when the PNC was in power, but what Mr. Nandlall surely knows is that half of the electorate simmered, stewed, and steamed, without any political provocations. Mr. Nandlall may pretend to be hard of hearing, unseeing, even obtuse, but he is not. For he has to know that now that the power shoe is on the PPP’s foot, then the other approximate half of the Guyana electorate is roiled, and rages with resentments. Whether racial or political, or tribal and communal, it is there, Dr. Anil. Now that we have oil-not hoping for it, but actually owning proven reservoirs of it-then the agitations have a more searing, piercing intensity about them. It is the proverbial and perennial: who gets a hand or who gets a kick. Proverbial, perennial, and perception can all be hurled out the window; the triplets also. What Guyanese are then left with is simple: the choice between consensus and confrontation; the option between consensus and cooperation and comprise (all dirty words) on the positive side, and confrontation and conflict and calamity on the other.
Now, Mr. Nandlall is a smarter fellow than me politically. I have some ideas and conclusions, though, about how comparatively sensible he is on a pragmatic level. Consensus helped a limping, lost President Joe Biden pass trillion-dollar relief bills during the pandemic; consensus aided the Democrats to triumph with a federal budget in a society in a state of undeclared war. With itself and no other. Though it may cause a surge of shuddering, Guyana is one step away, one candlestick away, from settling our grievances the hard way. Because national peace is involved, I cannot afford to be squeamish in language with what is tabled, how it is presented. But there must not be recklessness, either.
I think that the PPP Government, with Mr. Nandlall serving as a leading spear-carrier, is exemplary in its recklessness. If anything, the 2020 elections-before, during, and the interminable thereafter [now]-confirmed the rancorous and bludgeoning nature of our society. High up. Deep down. Right across. This is our reality, brother Nandlall. Here is another, even more grim in its potential for the gruesome: we have all those guns smuggled and stockpiled, and they are definitely in the tens of thousands, probably with another zero that could be added to identify our reality.
Yes, the State has its army of agents. Saddam Hussein had his also. Somewhere around that same neighborhood, there is Niger and it has/had democracy. I could be influenced to agree that if the oil was nonexistent, we could putter around and muddle along, like we have always done. Oil is the gamechanger. Oil is the showstopper. Oil is the danger. Mr. Mohabir Anil Nandlall, SC, MP, knows all this. He knows too that consensus-in whatever form, by whatever means-must be found, and must be given a chance to work. Somebody must try, die, for it. What say, you, brother?
