In the Gospels reporting Jesus’s last days, it’s Holy Week. Tis the week of Judas also. A man overpowered by his devious impulses, crooked calculations. In this miniseries highlighting the week of Judas, I steer Guyanese to the Judases in this country. A PPP Govt that is Judas exhumed, one given to extremes in dishonest conduct. Traveling wider, politicians who mostly abandon their duty to Guyanese. And what is that, if not the coolly twisted arrangements of the ever-conniving Judas? Third, there is noble Judas. A specter that came from afar, is 150 years old, slicker than the original. Finally, there’re so-called descendants of Jesus, who sell themselves for silver and supper. They sing.
Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Before any local republican gets the idea that the pending quartet of articles are about Roman Catholic proselytizing, banish the thought. It is the precedent of 2000-year old scripture as public service to fellow citizens, both Guyanese and American. By pointing to Judas, and connecting groups in operation here, the emphasis is on how many Judases live here. While thinking they are unseen, not known. For those who give short thrift to sacred writings, I gave them another betrayer this time from Shakespeare. There was noble Brutus, for their comfort and delight.
Is it I, Lord? The chorus that sounded when Jesus revealed: “one of you will betray me.’ By the tiniest measurement standards, the PPP Govt has betrayed Guyanese. ‘We shall do this and we shall be about this.’ Recall how those were the sworn commitments. Then the same lofty PPP betrayed the poor and hopeful, the believing and trusting. The thefts from the community purse, as Judas did, so also the PPP Govt like a common thief. Guyanese don’t have to wait for the shattering grimness of a long-ago death on a Good Friday afternoon, or the threatening, near overwhelming darkness of Diwali, they have the PPP. Many of its powerhouses and their followers shrink from the light, mock what is right. Where’s the money, stupid? Under the team that has accumulated all the power that can be imagined in its hands, but misuses it, Judas is not a figure of history, he is PPP reality, and Guyana’s tragedy.
Neither a name nor a day is he. In Guyana, and in the party founded by Dr. Cheddi B. Jagan, a battalion of Judases is the bequest that he has left for the people of this country. Check them out, conclude accordingly. Judas was man of secrecy, and what has been the PPP Govt if not secrecy, through and through? Judas was a great practitioner of cunning; a hustler and operator skilled at covering his tracks. And what are the chief characteristics, the behavioral patterns of almost all of the children of Cheddi and Janet Jagan, but cunning, hustling, scheming, and underground operating? He is not rolling over in his shroud. Cheddi B is crying in his ashes. Is this what I have spawned? Are these pathological liars and serial robbers of Guyanese dreams, Guyanese visions, Guyanese waiting and longing with expectations, the result of all the struggles and sacrifices? I feel for his survivors that stayed the course, however shakily, of which Donald Ramotar is one.
Judas was a seller and collector. Thirty pieces of silver for his betrayal, a kiss that has resonated down to this day. Today, that’s called aiding and abetting one crime that generates many others. In Guyana, during the latter part of this week, the Judas kiss will be repeated when PPP wolves fan out across Guyana’s expanse, and into Christian churches to plant that sickening, flesh-eating, and death-dealing, kiss on the cheeks of trusting Guyanese. Beware. They have betrayed, will go on betraying. Beware: wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Last, the Biblical Judas had a belated moment of truth. Regret. Remorse over the horror of his deed. He walked back. Take back the 30 pieces of silver. When it was rejected, he took the only way left. None of that will happen with the PPP-as government, as party-the first 30 pieces of sellout silver led to a monstrous addiction. Like one strike of crack cocaine, many in the PPP want more. Another 30 pieces of betrayal, billions lost. Then another. It is the Judas Era in Guyana.
