By GHK Lall- Loud are the cries: David Hinds is a bad man. A dangerous one, too. I need not identify the quarters from which those pour forth. But today’s objective is not to add gasoline, but to push fellow Guyanese to look at themselves first, then they can shout and lash as much as they please. That is, after examining themselves they still find the pleasing in who they are, and how their hypocrisies speak to rank dishonesty. Not necessarily only intellectual dishonesty, but just plain, everyday dishonesty.
There was Ms. Cathy Hughes, an MP, who was called a “lowlife”. It wasn’t by a member of the riffraff community. Where were and are all those bristling and flowing over with righteous indignation? Hypocrisy retreat, or merely a political culture that makes dishonesty ordinary?
Though he may wish to, so excited he is over the malicious and vicious, a former president cannot claim proud ownership of that lowlife” slur directed at a woman (no less).
“Lowlife” is a badge that was coined by a member of the private sector, who may or may not fall into Transparency International’s “business elite” bucket. But “lowlife” was used to demean and dispatch those Guyanese calling for renegotiating the odious Exxon oil contract.
The contract should be made into a capital crime, and so should attaching that denigration to Guyanese saying that this country should do more to get more. Where were the voices condemning Dr. David Hinds today back then? Who are making loud noises today, but the ones who were silent then?
I understand where Dr. Hinds was coming from, nothing more like the insidiousness dealing in potential vote buying. It is of misusing willing Black people to cajole and influence and entice and pressure poor Black Guyanese to sell the one franchise that they have. Nevertheless, I can say publicly to this friend and brother that he knows better of the wounding nature of words, and he must adapt.
If I cannot call out a brother, rightly or wrongly, as a matter of honest conscience, then who can I callout? Where would my own integrity and honesty be? How could I do so to sitting president, serving vice president, energetic attorney general, and others? Friend to friend, and citizen to citizen, can agree and disagree on little differences, and also huge ones that have no comparison.
In doing so with David Hinds, I readily recognise the language of liberation, know its electrifying effects. I bow also before the position tendered that those who worked on the inside for their enslavers had their utility to support still-trapped brethren. No quarrels here, no hard feelings here, except for one. It cuts both ways was for those who slaved diligently inside the Big House. There was that two-way information flow, where many a budding slave revolt were stopped before birth. Brutal retaliations followed.
There was utility, then treachery too. Moreover, crossing the floor is fine by me, an exercise in the constitutional and democratic right of free political association. But when structured and systematic vote buying is the end game, then all that is fair in elections just took a beating, descended to another record low. I cannot be for that degree of political dishonesty. I could have told President David Granger that he lost the 2020 elections and that he must go.
Where are the conscientious Guyanese who defend (or slink into convenient silence) from Sue-Gate to Ivor Thom-Gate to Land-Gate to Corruption-Gate (elites)? Where are the simple, decent, principled Guyanese in the PPP? I believe that there are a few; not many, but enough. Honesty induces fearlessness, delivers outspokenness. If not, then what….?
A word is banned: any mention of corruption in the National Assembly. Corruption in a word, or prearranged corruption of the mind? Criminals are coddled, while citizens are ravaged. Now there are those who suddenly are all for the politest, friendliest public expressions, I have been there long before. But where are those imprisoned by selectivity, hypocrisy, and dishonesty on Thursday afternoons?
I know people get married on a Sunday afternoon, but regarding Thursdays, I need to seek counsel. For what Guyanese have on Thursday afternoons, compliments of the Hon. Vice President, is a marriage of political madness to verbal mayhem, which generates more monstrousness. A testimony to Guyanese-style communications, one in which the president has inserted his own toxic flavours. Communications in Guyana is an unexploded minefield, but people hear and see and read what they wish, giving all the courage to take a stand. Because it justifies political rewards.
I know of a citizen who has been reviled and defamed as a predator, a shady business owner, a collector of illicit cash. All that from PPP Government’s insiders for the crimes of frankness and being about truthfulness. Some government truth-seekers would have helped. To where have they disappeared? On President Ali’s head those have been hung, as well as plastered on the face of Vice President Jagdeo. They know who; they know what they must do.
David Hinds spoke to a condition that’s is destructive to the state of democracy, and the State itself. He selected some jarring phrases. I spoke my mind through my own message. There are those Guyanese who bash him today. Where were they yesterday? How come no issue taken with “parasites” or the Stepin and Fetchit “joker” when that bubbled from the top? One man’s assassin is the next man’s liberator. It’s that other side of Guyana, its dark side. Different people, different weapons. Once again: selectivity draped in hypocrisy, with both bolstered by unmatched dishonesty.
