Happy Independence Day (really?)

Thanks to fellow Guyanese who shared Independence Day greetings.  But how can I, in good conscience, reciprocate those greetings?  How when there is the awareness that Guyanese are not truly free, not free to partake of liberty to its fullest?  Not even leaders, who are compelled to kneel before foreign yolks.  Not when they are not even their own masters.  Not when they do not have the freest hand to be the ultimate decisionmakers for what enhances Guyanese life.  What is happy about this 60th birthday that reminds of where Guyana and Guyanese are now trapped and held captive?  When leaders settle for the emasculation of sanctity of contract, there is only one flag that they are saluting.  It is not Guyana’s.  There is only one pledge to which they swear allegiance.  It is to what benefits exploiters.

No amount of happy talk from a foreign ambassador, no volume of warming, self-glorifying rhetoric from a national leader, should be allowed to lull into a false sense that Guyanese have it good, and that things are good for all Guyanese.  Cannot be when there is a mass of Guyanese that are hungry and trembling from the fear of not knowing from where their next meal is going to come.  Or when that may happen, if it ever does.  Guyana has been gifted this extraordinary national patrimony, and it’s been six years after the first gushers spewed their riches from beneath the seabed.  Thus, I assert, I insist, that not one citizen of this Republic should be burdened by the worry of the next meal, by the dread of encroaching, suffocating poverty.

On the way to worship before 6 a.m. today, a couple of streets in the middle of the capital were clogged with vehicular traffic.  Guyanese, mainly younger, and all registering in the eye and in the mind in the same way, were in a celebratory way.  They must be delirious about marginalization; they must enjoy their second-class (if that high) citizenship.  Because when another set of Guyanese, the small, insider group that is living high, is free to grab the bulk of the sweetness of this rich land, that means the rest of the population is forced to exist on crumbs, scraps, and the occasional cheap handout.  Does that sound like freedom in all of its splendor for citizens across the map?  Or does that remind of those who have nothing, and are considered as nothing?  To put differently, those who are only worthy of the provisions set aside for slaves and serfs, so that their labor can be further milked.

Music can delight, but it cannot do anything about famished appetite.  Political rhetoric can be pleasing to the ear, but it offers no relief to those who are sick.  And tired.  And disappointed and disgusted.  And, when all those have come and gone, when the music and rhetoric have spread their last echoes, there is the despair that flickers, then floods, and which never fades.  Look at where Guyana is today.  a few short years ago, supposedly free men felt free to promise to remove the bonds of economic slavery.  An oil contract that shackled, that reduced, Guyana’s most powerful institutions to a state of morbidity.  From the presidency to the National Assembly, there stands two edifices of independence, but which are as powerful as a slave enchained, as a body deboned.  Men turn to jelly and that’s hailed as liberty.  The pillars of national self-determination have been rendered impotent, if not idiotic, and that is celebrated as freedom.  When I hear Independence spoken of in terms solemn and soaring, there is the Guyanese environment that puts all that to shame.

Impotent and impeachable leaders.  Impaled and impoverished peoples.  Immoral and implacable partners.  Imprisoned and imperiled institutions.  When there is an unstoppable confluence of such circumstances, and an environment crippled by malaise and misplaced priorities and fake thrills, then the free flow of liberties that are part and parcel of Independence are either a miracle or a mirage.  The likes of which has never been encountered before.  For me, Independence is a mirage.  The make-believe exercises that do not cure one Guyanese of his or her pains, distress, and anguish.

How do I, as a man, as son of this soil, as one blessed with a working conscience say Happy Independence Day?  The best I can manage is: make the best of this Independence Day and season, no matter how dismal the condition, how grim the outlook.  Change must come.