Guyana’s Foreign Legion -Voters, Offenders, Violators

By GHK Lall- Foreigners have progressed from prized possessions to developing obsession.  Registration.  Recommendations about registration.  A bomb that blights a Sunday night changes everything overnight.  From votes at the fingertips to menaces to be enrolled, possibly watched.  The illegal ones now under the radar, the numbers that no one wanted to talk about from the comfort of their high offices.  Let Guyanese worry about such, ah, trivialities.  Until, they can no longer be categorized as such.  Try this thought to see if anything can be made out of it: can anyone see the vicious bad guys, with malice aforethought inside, putting on a shirt and a smile, and turning up at a registration site?

Or, the real sophisticated ones, that are part of the foreign legion of Fifth Columnists already deeply enmeshed here, not presenting themselves to obtain the cover of registration, to blend seamlessly into the system?  Distressing that it took a narrow escape to get Guyana racing to this place to cover loopholes, even identify sleeping threats.  Pardon is asked for using the license of narrow escape.  A young child died, seven others injured, and all Guyanese see shadows, where there aren’t any.

From official inertia to some level of hysteria.  From political sleepwalking to national mobilizing and galvanizing.  Foreigners make for a cunning voting subsidy.  It is understood that some already have their own National ID cards.  All is fair and politics and war.  Well, this is war, however looked at, in whatever form the foundations take, to whatever the objectives are.  What I do appeal to my fellow Guyanese-from officials to individuals-is that they do not begin to look at every foreign-looking, foreign-sounding, and foreign-behaving (if there is such a creature)-as if they represent a mortal threat.

The cocoon of complacency in which this country has lived has been turned upside down, and that bottom side of it doesn’t have much about it that is soothing, inspiring.  Whether Cuban or Venezuelan, Columbian or Trinidadian, who is friend and who is foe to be feared?  Guyanese know about fear: invisible, yet palpable (their own people).  Guyanese are familiar with those who claim to be friends, but are watched as one regards a venomous snake.  Cross its path, and it could the end of the honeymoon that was thought would last forever.  At least, for the first five years, then the next; once everyone behaved themselves in the properly acceptable manner.

With so many powerful and rambunctious friends in the local environment, there wasn’t much time or interest to focus on foes.  Foes! In this paradise?  The domestic ones are a known bunch, branded as undesirables, dealt with accordingly, if only to squeeze them into a corner, and shut them up.  Now every Guyanese is looking northward, and it is not to North America, but to the left side of the compass, and there is Caracas.  What the hell are they thinking over there?  What could be stirring and with the worst possibilities in store for Guyana?

The Regent and King Streets gas station explosion revealed to this country how vulnerable it is.  And who the real enemies are.  Nothing is going to change relative to that from the higher elevations, such as Office of the President, similar such offices a notch or two downwards.  Nothing is going to change, be it on Monday mornings or Thursday afternoons.

Registration in its most well-intended and most comprehensive sweep will not net the highly trained moles and plants that lurk in ambush.  Then what?  Another soft target, a couple more victims, another round of psychological terror?  Recall that I was around the World Trade Center on that destructive Monday morning 24 Septembers ago.  Only to find myself some distance from another blast, this time on a Sunday night in October 24 years later.  I have seen terror firsthand.  Guyanese get to know it closeup, now have an idea of what it is to live with it.  Could be from the bushes and with a bag.  Or some other shadowy place and with other devices.  Which one of those characters will see the benefit of having their faces and prints on a Guyana register?

The truly bold may decide that the best decision is to stand in plain sight and get registered and an ID.  But if they commit a crime, I don’t think that Guyanese should expect any sticking around.  I am still surprised that Senor Perdomo was so untutored, so cavalier.  Perhaps, he loves Guyana that much.  It could be also that a statement was being made, which didn’t originate with him.  I hear about readiness with death penalty.  I say let us not die in the brain first, then watch the rest of the body wither.