By GHK Lall- In characteristic fashion, in the aftermath of the gas station bomb blast that took the life of six-year-old Soraya Bourne and injured seven others, Guyanese had their say in fulsome, cautioning, reassuring words. I marvel at how easy saying all the right things publicly has become domestically. National unity. National security. Those are at the apex of concerns. They are also a thick slice of the national obscenity that saturates this country. Talk is cheap, and Guyana has political and commercial people who are among the best at saying the right things at the right time. The will, the type of leadership character, that is needed is just not there to give an honest boost to the words and postures that come so freely, almost as second nature.
It takes a Venezuelan suspected of some linkage to that Sunday night bomb blast to unleash a Category-5 level of handwringing here. The call for national unity, some heartfelt, runs into a brick wall. A hard kick-in-the-gut reality where one is not one. No matter how loudly and constantly hollered, it is a farce, and a fraud worked upon Guyanese.
How can it not be, when that very call and claim to oneness is blasted apart by the very actions of those leading the call for it? Through whom is squeezed out, who is left out, who is made into a traitor or adversary, when the biggest betrayers are the ones that speak so prettily, sanctimoniously. Do the people of this country, and the politicians who hold great sway over Guyanese, need a Venezuelan suspected of being involved in the killing of a young citizen to talk about national unity? Yes, they do. Then what they do afterwards, when this harrowing interlude fades away, is return right back to who they were and do what they always did. Being racist and demagogic dividers for the retention of power, or ambitions for grabbing hold of it.
In quieter times, when the few sober-headed call for a probing of the soul of Guyana, to get its bottom, through authentic searching for the truths that could lead to national reconciliation, there is scant interest, mere lip service. But when a foreign national is fingered as the prime suspect in that lethal bomb blast, all and sundry jump up and are for national unity and national security. There is weakening of Guyanese by Guyanese, and there is this obscenity about being about national unity. There are enemies within the gates, and they are foreign, but national leaders are more obsessed, more occupied, with those Guyanese that they declare to be domestic enemies and treat them as such. If any Guyanese is in need of a specimen, they can talk to me.
Do Guyanese need national unity? They need it more than they need oxygen and food, and a fair slice of their oil money. Guyana has America (up to a point), but apparently Guyanese politicians have no use for those citizens who point at them and say that their nakedness is showing. That their perverseness is on exhibition. And that the more that they are about distortions and deflections, and distancing from reality, the more they drive the Guyanese people into a state of disunity.
In Guyana, very senior political connivers wield the sword that divides like a wildfire. Then, they turnaround and state without a trace of shame, or a speck of honesty, that they are about oneness and togetherness. Guyanese are scapegoated and nothing is thought about it, and how much that wrenches this society apart. But, when there is a Venezuelan national that surfaces in the aftermath of a bomb blast, then the handkerchiefs come out, and the words spill out, about national unity and national security. There are a small handful of genuine patriots in that crowd who mean what they say. The overwhelming majority in the political and commercial arenas are a bunch of odious hypocrites.
The fact that they have toiled so devotedly to dividing and devastating this country, and the minds of Guyanese, converts them into first-rate traitors, in my line of thinking. For when an existential national crisis constantly hangs over the head of this nation, then a suspected Venezuelan is not needed as the crutch on which to lean and clamor for national unity and national security. Doing so then soars to the level of the rankest national obscenity.
National unity has to be more than preached. It must be lived by leader to the last citizen. National security is not an overnight sensation, it’s an everyday duty. Cheat the people. Deceive the people. Divide and diminish the people. Then still call for national unity is then more than a fool’s errand. It is a national vulgarity. Whether touted under the banner of one, or dispersed into the bitterness that now transcends all else.
