By GHK Lall- Members of Parliament from both the PPP Govt side and the opposition aisles have a challenge on their hands. Mr. Speaker, or Mr. Master Executioner. If government MPs were to choose Mr. Executioner, they giveaway the game -the Speaker delivers for their benefit.
When the honorable opposition members (everyone, no matter what Drs. Ali, Nadir, and Nandlall say, they all are) rise to get moving, if their salutation is Mr. Speaker, they do so with the hollowness of tattered consciences. For what has the same Mr. Speaker not been for their interests tabled, if not Mr. Executioner? Mr. Master Public Executioner.
Recognition of the facts on the grisly, bloody floor of parliament leaves a trail that leads to the honourable Guyanese called Mr. Speaker. My brow is furrowed, since I think that the most perfect fit is Mr. Executioner. He gets the job done. Unpleasant ones. Disturbing ones. I suggest to fellow citizens that they be true to themselves, and consider how the Speaker’s handiworks stand in dogeared, flea-bitten, roach-raided, rodent-mauled disarray.
The handiworks of the man, not the honourable Speaker himself. Guyanese should realise that Mr. Executioner is the best full headed, full faced, covering (with slits for eyes and nostrils), given the dangerous, deplorable deterioration of democratic norms in parliament. When democratic norms are demolished, then the scabs look alarmingly close to parliamentary despotism. When such a condition prospers, then is when a Public Executioner enjoys great popularity with powerful recruiters and controllers. He is revered by godfathers. Reviled by the mobs.
I invite all Guyanese, from friends who are few, to foes originating in an overflowing cup. The symbol’s detectable, delicious. Friends and fellow Guyanese (I almost said Romans): the record of Guyana’s Public Executioner strides on its own legs, is full of the incendiary and the bloody. Mr. Executioner has chopped off the heads of mere motions, papers pushed in front of him seeking some recourse, some degree of repeal. He was so committed, the ferocious image of a determined pit-bull, that he axed a move for a moment of silence for an 11-year-old daughter of this savaged, gruesome minefield that is Guyana.
A thoughtful Speaker couldn’t do something like that, wouldn’t dream of (and even if he did), would not dare to slash at a moment of silence for anybody, or anything. Not for rabid dogs. Not even against venomous reptiles. A moment of conscience, of probably divine intervention (State House may claim that right) let to the civility of corrective action. There was still hope for Mr. Executioner brandishing his chopper. There is still hope for Guyana, in the fading twilight of its hold on parliamentary democracy.
Then the walls of Guyana’s parliament collapsed. One savaging sweep after another of the scimitar of a Master Executioner during happy hour. I think I see a man driven to extremes by the sight and smell of enemy blood. Arteries severed. Bones crunched. Flesh dangling. Oxygen drained. Life’s pulsations ebbing. The newest victim for the Master Executioner, which he went after with a vengeance (probably as schooled) was the then waiting, hanging Leader of the Opposition, We Invest in Nationhood’s Azruddin Mohamed.
Mr. Executioner hacked away, and carved away, without making much progress. Try separating a man’s head from his shoulders, only for sword to encounter rubber. Mr. Mohamed must be a jazzman, which earns him the honorific of ‘Cat’ Mohamed. The political lives he has exhibited in a short time reminds me of that feline prowess. Personally, Cat is better than ‘fugitive.’
Mr. Executioner (Mr. Guillotine) was living his Guyana version of the French Revolution as he tried and tried to cutoff the Leader of the Opposition out of existence. Guyana’s a real hard town with hard men who are into hard stuff. When that selection process finally climaxed, the Speaker doubling as Master Executioner then decided that the time had come to behead a new victim.
Truncate the press is the new preferred pastime of Mr. Executioner, this tireless chopper and slicer, doing a thankless job. A centurion of the commanding state who can’t afford to sleep, lessen his vigilance. The media in Guyana was first disarmed by a slight stab (long held up selection process, procedure), then decapitated.
It’s obvious, as presented, that Mr. Executioner is one hell of a dedicated, industrious chainsaw operator. He axes, slashes, chops, truncates, cuts off, beheads, and decapitates Guyanese, sending them packing to some political halfway house. Take a bow, Mr. Speaker.
