The revelations coming from this season of elections. It is now sparking, firing on more cylinders, and elections revelations rock. Sparking and firing are not the safest words for elections in Guyana. But they are of reality, strip the environment of hypocrisy. Some of it. Say free and fair, and I see a mirage. Say violence and fear, and don’t say PNC. I see PPP. The PPP as orchestrators and perpetrators of violence. The threat of violence. Psychological violence -don’t leh dem see yuh near dah maan…. Verbal violence on the pathways of villages, the loud, angry, aggressive, and dangerous kind. Oh, there’s that other kind of verbal violence and verbal terror. Silence. In these new days of discovery and smacking self-satisfaction, violence or the threat of it isn’t a horror. Violence is now an acceptable means towards any ends.
From my earliest days, I have heard and read, reheard and reread to the point of flooding the system that Burnham and the PNC were about violence. Hooliganism and thuggery and gangsterism. PNC violence had one main ingredient. Black violence. No sugarcoating. Am older now, bear that identification proudly. Age is my distinction. My separation also from tribal deceits and frauds. From any side. Is or was PNC violence all that Guyanese have ever experienced, endured with traumas scorching their psyches 60 years later? I dare to speak of PPP violence and Indian violence-whether sponsored or active participant-because I still can see and absorb. Then think and talk. Call as seen. Write of what comes from seeing and thinking. I cannot be among the scant few in Guyana who sees wrongs, speaks about them, even against them. Publicly. All those who were once agitated by the mere mention of violence now applaud it. The other man is a gangster; my guy is a guardian.
The official guardians have all applied for long leave, proceeded to their places of retreat. No evil seen nor heard. Or, as no report was lodged and received. One cannot expect the Guyana Police Force to know everything, be everywhere. Fair as far as that goes. But there are reports of the police being very energetic and determined in the action taken on the Linden Highway involving about 100 buses. Police denials followed. Who is right? I search. What is “free and fair”, a mirage? What about respect for the rule of law and order, a joke? If so in the open, I turn my back on GECOM, and whatever is in store there. When things such as these are forced into the narrow consciousness and tighter confines of Guyana’s supreme advocate for due process, he parries with the subtitle of “sanctions.” Convicted criminals can’t vote, and now it appears that alleged committers of crimes can’t be afforded the fullest protections that democracy allows. In my thinking this is how men who claim higher learning interpret and reinterpret their duty in such a twisted manner that they drive themselves insane. Or into the waiting arms of insipidity.
The Guyana Police Force, from the bad ole days, has acquired a rep and rap for being that kind of policing weapon. A Burnham one and a PNC one, which automatically transformed it into a Black one. I shrink not from saying what must be said to shake to senses, shake out some of the chronic sicknesses. Whose police weapon is it today? It doesn’t know, it doesn’t have interest, it doesn’t turnup. Again, whose police weapon is this national force today? I invite the chief national lawman to pronounce.
Politically, it’s a different world in Guyana in AD 2025. Revolutionarily different from 2020, others before. The most time, the most intensity, the most hostility was always the reciprocal mauling between the PPP and PNC. Not so today, or as much. There’s a stranger, the strangest of political animals indeed. America has its TV star for a leader, Ukraine its joker in that same capacity, yet Guyana outshines both: an alleged criminal running for the highest national office. I have never seen a man accused so long, but not charged after so long. For the real articles of the criminal code violated. He fears extradition to America for what? Not paying his taxes owed to Guyana? If its gold smuggling, arms smuggling, people smuggling, I don’t want him here. But taxes are all that’s lined up against him, so far. And sanctions are the first smart bomb what tumbles out the mouth of Guyana’s president, vice president, and attorney general. Funny that the PPP Government never has its own sanctions to apply before OFAC, or since.
Sanctions weaponized high up. Violence in the streets and roadways. Times change. Actors exchange roles. Seems like Guyana’s version of democracy. Guyanese have fallen in love with these developments; a certain segment has.
