What was that dark creature that added darkness to the already dark night when it crawled all over Georgetown on Tuesday night? That couldn’t be a blackout alone. I have been in blizzard conditions, what is called a whiteout. Can’t see hand. Face lose feeling. Mind fries and freezes at the same time. Must have been both a blackout and a whiteout that shot out Guyanese out of their slumber, then shut them out of any light for an extended period.
Why is this happening in Guyana, the land well on its way to the stars? At least there is some light there. There is a bag of money hanging around, so any complaints about lack of resources must be called for what it is. Calculated deviousness. I think there is a management problem. Who is managing whom, and what is being managed and how? Those are the questions that should enrage (and terrorize) the regular city resident, all citizens, who doesn’t have backup facilities, and can barely afford to pay the light bill. Management shouldn’t be part of any energy conversation today. Not after 60 years of the same seasons of blackouts, brownouts, and where Guyanese are put out of their minds. I don’t think that the management in place is working. I would get rid of most, if not all, of them. There’s a qualifier: no replacing those fired with family relations, political relations, which guarantees repeating the problem that is a crisis.
I seem to recall that there was some talk of a Turkish power ship. Are Guyanese sure that what the PPP Govt paid good money for was a Turkish ship, and not what is best flushed down the toilet? Simply replace the p on the ship with the letter t and the pretense and guessing games don’t have to labored through. When is this perennial light problem, now national calamity, going to be done right? Politics shows its face, and it is time to bring out the candles. A good supply of those, or firewood, is recommended. The next time anyone in this country gets on a soapbox and starts frothing about Guyana being the next Dubai, I will order a plane and get all of them a one-way ticket to Alcatraz. If that is unavailable, there is always room to be found in that facility in Honduras.
Millions spent, then billions, and Guyanese still have blackout as their bosom companion day and night. Now they are no longer talking in the millions and Guyana dollars, but in the billions and in Yankee money. Blackouts should be made into an extraditable offense. Send the whole pack of them off to Leavenworth. I would include those who write pretty speeches and those who proudly read them. Age or rank should not be the beneficiary of exclusion or immunity. The lights keep going out all over the city (try again; that’s not the Drifters) and the best that those who tell the people want they want to hear is that the PNC dropped the ball. Or the rebound that is quick in coming: the PPP is responsible. In writing that, the thinking surges that there is a ‘government official’ that they will call on the Guyana Police Force to investigate. If for contributing to gold smuggling, then it is an easy cut-and-paste job to do the same with blackouts. This is a hell of a sick country with a regiment of sicker people. Somehow, they always end up in government. Visit the I-C-U, and they are all there waiting to be seen by you and I.
It is one thing to be sick in the daylight. It is a quite frightening development to be sick in thick, impenetrable darkness. Not natural darkness, but manmade darkness. They tell Guyanese about a bridge over there and a black-eye pea farm next door and black-belly sheep somewhere else. God damnit. Stop blabbing about the relatively trivial, and then add insult to injury by sending Guyanese taxpayer a bill for the celebrations. Talk about what will be done to fix the rolling waves of blackouts. Talk about rolling some heads up the creek. Talk about replacing them with people who can get the job done. No more political imports. No more blasted blackouts. Elvis Pressley sang about a Blue Christmas. Andy Williams dreamt of a White Christmas. It is time that Guyanese share in the joy of a blackout free Christmas, both before and long afterwards. Get to it. Get rid of blackouts, once and for all. There’s a slice of my Christmas and New Year’s wish.
