By GHK Lall- The government is not moving from where it has been stuck immovably. The opposition is not moving from what it has made the centerpiece of its thrusts. The issue is the 2025 elections. Sometime and somehow, there is going to be movement. The kind of movement that may not foster a tranquil Guyana. Movement that sets this country in a particular mindset, pushes it inexorably into a vortex that traps and devours all. The indications are there, the timing and placement of hints have seeped out. I discern more than hints. Cautions are what I interpret from the string of words, postures.
National elections in Guyana are bigger than family. Elections shove God aside. For some in the PPP and PNC, elections are superior to motherhood, nationhood. Surrounding circumstances supply streams of past evidence, litter the present. Then oil came here in vast quantities (much more than Excellency AR is saying). Due to that accursed arrival, elections now have become a matter of life and death. The combatants are arrayed: PPP and company on one side, PNC and AFC on the other. The others don’t matter, notwithstanding claims to the contrary. Something will have to give, some movement occur. Somebody, some side, must move.
The opposition has made “bloated list(s)” the lynchpin of its postures and narratives. Even a child knows that when padded lists exist, it means that premeditations occurred, manipulations are lurking, with agents waiting for call. In the unchallengeable language of a pickaxe, cheating, which is that second word uttered by newborns after ‘mama’. Rigging, it is; it is that ingrained in Guyanese psyche from birth. I would assert even before. Thus, it was automatic for the opposition to table biometrics, given its position on that other hated B word (bloated).
The PPP Government said a loud, resounding NO! Not foolproof. Subject to gaming, among its other efforts at blocking. GECOM said NO too. Then no time now. The next time around, for sure. No biometrics, no satisfactory list, no time, leads me to this precarious slope: no calm, no quiet. Who wants to hear about later, five years later? Who wants to live with another five years of the horrors of unclean governance, unsavory political leadership, and unconscionable depletion of that oceanic gift?
Unconscionable when so many Guyanese are wanting. I have no fowl in this dogfight (no mistake). But as an observer, I cannot see how Guyanese would have the stomach for five more years under the men who have been terrorizing Guyanese existence. Unsparingly and only slightly less sharply, there is not much optimism in what hangs around and about in Guyana, as possible successors. Nevertheless, every group believes (or pretends) that it can do better tomorrow. The past five years was just made to vanish. Using that as a yardstick, who wants to see more, live with lawlessness, scurrilousness, and leadership madness? One is deranged, another is diabolically clever.
That’s one section of the national elections’ context, portrait. Lists and digitalized systems. The worst leadership in what had every ingredient to be the best of times. Five more years, or the ferocity to resist? The opposition has been showing its hand in more than one way. Street protest was shelved. Then, street protest found its believers, with the AFC raising its hand over non-elections issues. More recently, the PNC echoed that protest call, but with specific bearing to elections and with biometrics featuring front and center. To emphasize its seriousness, “mass” was fused to protest. I put all this in a simple way, which all should relate to easily.
If my position is that what exists is geared to my disadvantage, facilitates cheating/rigging, then how can I sit still and accept what results from a crooked process? What am I going to tell those who believed in me, supported me: we were cheated, but next time everything will be better? Why, that makes me a party to criminality, a certain aider and abettor. This is where I see the opposition to be: PNC, AFC, WPA et al. There is little room for walking back from the biometrics brink. If that, then all credibility is torn to pieces. Further, when what has been done with the money, who’s in, who left out, the environment assumes a pregnant air. One that is ominous, barring movement, meeting of the minds, and compromise.
Further, there has been the last five-year season of corruption, discrimination, failed institutions, and leadership depredations. There are Guyanese enjoying the fruits from those. There are Guyanese calculating how to be a part of those. There are Guyanese incensed at what those have done to them, where they have been left. Behind and on the basement floor.
Finally, it’s early March, so some may believe that the road to elections is long. Developments should improve their minds. Processes set to cheat. People lined up (and held in reserve) to implement cheating. Others slowly standing in objection. Five years of oil are about done. Five years of authoritarianism, they have been. Five more years could provide the fuel for movement from authoritarianism to totalitarianism. All in all, the sounds and sentiments confirm that this season of elections will be unprecedented. Could be unhappy, too.
