Dancing on the Dead: PPP’s Rolling Caravan Amid Barima Grief

By GHK Lall- Great and commendable stuff, on the face of it.  If one was uninformed, that would be the conclusion.  A PPP Govt caravan rolling into the village.  Village after village from Region One to the next, until all are given a taste of this magical mystery tour that is not such a mystery.  From seniors to juniors, it seems as the whole government is on the move.  Is there anyone left to mind the store in town?

I’m afraid that some ruff stuff will now have to be dragged into the picture.  This whole, big, government circus should not be on the dead bodies and unclosed wounds of those grieving over a hundred lost.  Simple citizens are given the joys of 2030 in 2026.  Would have been wonderful, applauded from this corner, but only if so many were not dead, so many questions still unanswered.

From town to country, and all over in a dazzling circle, there was and is the PPP Govt in motion.  No one was so vulgar as to wear red.  Since the occasion called for white, then white was the costume that had to be.  I see men and women with their hair and pants on fire.  Many would call that damage control.  I call it dancing on the dead.  Want a model city?  Say hello to the right people.  Been wanting a full-service government facility?  It will be a reality before anyone can count to twenty.  And, so the music played, as if in atonement for 100 dead.  Sad sweet music that savages the dead.

I look at them and the revulsion rises.  I stifle the reflex to vomit.  When from top to bottom was warned that the people are hurting, they are struggling, there was laughter.  Then slander.  Call for a conversation and there was cursing, if one was lucky (or not seen as too much of problem).  If one was seen as a parasite, then it was attack and abuse, and those were just the start.  The PPP as government or party has neither morals nor ethics nor standards.

I behold a bunch of dirty, nauseating people, almost without exception.  To coverup the wholesale corruption, from intellectual to riffraff was let loose to shut down those found offensive.  The deceptions had to be concealed.  The overnight wealth made into the imaginary, or the result of honest labor.  Indeed, that Guyanese truism has come to pass.  Moon duz run till day ketch am.  The PPP Govt run out of both moon and day.  A boat not fit for a crab-dog, a floating coffin that led to over a hundred dead.

What is most obscene about all of the tanks and turnkeys is that it’s just another show for the showmen and showgirls in the PPP Govt.  Predators playing on the minds of vulnerable citizens.  Politicians low enough to convert a time of mystery (that boat), and a time of mourning (families and communities) into an opportunity to deflect further, mislead further, and one more.

Seize an opportunity to rob the living and the dead.  In words that many favour, depraved indifference.  The thoughtful should see a sly exercise moving from place to place: distract the people.  Overpower them.  Make them forget boat and that farm.  Oh yes, that farm.  Instead of bring out the support and vote, there’s the spectacle of bring out government and bulldoze the people with big speeches involving big deals.

The government knows that it dares not walk back any commitments made.  It could be fatal, even with fickleness of voters considered.  For this is what this rolling circus cum caravan of the PPP Govt is all about: 1) drown the Guyanese people with goodness, so they forget MV Barima horror; 2) sell the government as caring, visionary; and 3) bring out government and make it as if for the people.

The PPP Govt had six years of oil to improve the lot of Guyanese.  The MV Barima catastrophe exposed all the lies and holes in how good this government and its leadership have been.  So, there’s rushing to plug the breaches.  A government racing to outrun its dark, disfigured shadow.