When the pressures build, when anger flares, when the lid blows off, when the steam billows….
In increasing numbers, and across many distant parts of this cratered land, there is one constant. Guyanese are angry. Driven to madness by anger. Overcome by anger. The injustices that the poor are forced to live with as close companions. The wrongs that are never righted. Linden and now Tuschen. Linden before, Linden again; and places like Tuschen added and multiplied, but never subtracted from in the grim litany of their sufferings. Never resolved fully or satisfactorily. There is always some crucial component missing. Credibility. No belated leadership haste helps to salve the wounds. No leadership attempts to put out fires have lasting effect. Because there is always, will always be, another of the kind of days that tear down Linden and another one that ruptures Tuschen. When all that is done is put out fires, where is the time, where is the interest, where is the energy to address seriously the underlying contributors? To take them apart, and put those pieces where they belong? In storage. Or suspended in full public view.
When people are terribly, unbearably distraught, they tear their hair out by the roots with their bare hands, often scar themselves unthinkingly, uncaringly. They set fires. They sacrifice their surroundings. They beat their heads against walls. I can look from a distance, even a height, (and others also) and say, how can they? Walk in their shoes and screaming comes quickly, effortlessly. There is real pain in this land of plenty. The first paradox. Beside the pain of injustices, there is the pain of poverty. The poor and frustrated vent their fury at tormentors that come and go, that slip in and out of their consciousness, their communities, their forced calm.
The powerful reigning over the impotent. The shielded and protected standing supreme over the poor peasantry. The promises come with practiced swiftness; the bottled remedies taken from a shelf, prescribed and administered. This society is in urgent need of some genuine nursing. The cures smack of the superficial. An investigation. A neutral pathologist. Some digging to get to the bottom. When all the dredging is done, what is it that has surfaced? It is more than the punishment meted out to a perpetrator. More than an errant police rank brought to book. It is about a whole system that has tottered for a long time, and now all but collapsed under the weight of men and women grown obese from lawlessness.
The mystery developments surrounding the passing of an 11-year-old child, a girl no less, is but a passing blip on the screens of their caring. That is, if the fattened and contented ever cared. It is of a diabolical system that erupts out of control, crushes the vulnerable. This contribution is part of the postmortem, the ordeal of gathering the scattered fragments in one manageable palm. When there is this culture of deception that’s supported by a system built on official frauds, then Linden and Tuschen are the victims. Tomorrow, it will be some other place of hopelessness, of easy manipulations, and of yet another revelation involving the substance of today’s Guyana. Its dirty, lengthy, well-fertilized underbelly.
The political-entertainment complex. The supporting political-police council. The political-media complex that is so condoning of evildoers (an 11-year-old young lady in Tuschen wrenched from this life) and two dead in Linden at the hands of their appointed guardians. Someone will run there, the same one will make a speech, and it is the same sick song that will be repeated some other time in yet another space. The pursuit of justice spoken of loudly, and displayed from the balconies and rooftops. My Lord, my God! This is how hypocritical and heinous this country has become all the way to the top of its crown. The unjust knows nothing about justice: how to be about it, how to deliver it. They do know, though, how to package what passes for justice in their heads, and present it to the powerless and voiceless. Those who steal from the poor, and then deceive them, have no idea, no stomach for true justice.
Taking all these into consideration, Guyanese need more than a truth and justice commission. They need an extraordinarily empowered tribunal to unravel the official untruths and political injustices that are both the law and religion of this wretched patch of earth. When the police apparatus has little credibility, then what faith can be placed in those who arranged it that way, maneuvers it in that manner. When leaders mislead, then their comrades, their enforcers, their supporting posse are given license to despoil the young in our midst. And to remove from the face of this earth those who object, those found undesirable. This is not about rogue cops and scoundrels for a surrounding cast. Let me tell all Guyanese this. This is about the national culture that powers entertainment, noise pollution, dirty money, dirty cops, and the dirty stream of dividends that go upwards to the political authors and orchestrators. Narcotics. Trafficking. Prostitution. Gaming. Alcohol. Noise. The pickings are rich and from police to politicians, and the hangers-on in between, feast until they bloat. These are the element in the obscene Guyana underbelly. When Leonora cannot be fixed, then Tuschen and Linden and Coverden and Den Amstel don’t have a ghost of a chance.
Even the least learned of Guyanese know of this devouring reality and its connecting dots. Because they live with it, see it, are overwhelmed by it. And, then there comes that time when they can’t take none of this anymore and they blow. When people have nothing to lose, they lose control. When people watch men gorging themselves on the riches that belong to citizens, they cannot sit still anymore, wait for the next spoonful of belated charity. Whether Linden or Tuschen, Guyanese don’t want to hear leadership promises anymore. They want what is palpable, could be felt from hand to heart. Social justice. Economic justice. Justice that is persuasive because it is real, it is enriching in so many ways. For too long, those named among the richest people in the world have been among the most misused, most misled, and most traumatized. There is something called elections coming up. I weigh how those who don’t have will react to what they get from what comes out of those proceedings.
