Elections—when people shun all else

Feb 12, 2019 Editorial 0

Elections! This is the focus and object on which all national attention is fiercely uninterruptedly concentrated. It is about the courts, how to march ahead, who should walk away from parliament, why there should be staying, and what are the government and GECOM about.
Everybody, from laymen to leaders, domestic eggheads to vocal diaspora, and children to racial and political champions are experts on every aspect related to this national season-long festival now in full bacchanalian swing.
Just look around; listen carefully. Except that there is no need to either look or listen at all. The conversations and positions are so saturating that the uninterested would either stumble over them; or this could fall right on their unsuspecting heads.
The few, who happen to be totally oblivious, would be quickly reminded of day-to-day reality, indeed hourly reality, with developments, rumors, news, competing personalities, and social media feeds abounding.
This is Christmas, carnival, and Mashramani all rolled into one. This is the flavor and spirit of an all-encompassing, missing-nothing, saying-something, and knowing-everything national elections watch.
Guyanese are now so engaged in this election watch that securing the home, feeding the dogs, checking pay slip, bank deposits and balances, and mortgage and light bill payments all take a distant second place. Very few citizens have time or interest in such.
Since everybody is busy talking–really arguing–at the same time, nobody has any complaints about noise nuisance. Election music is the sweetest music around to be found, and all think they are either Sam Cooke or Otis Redding; or Mohamed Rafi or Mukesh. This is the symphony, the calypso, soca, and chutney in Guyana’s election music hall.
The watch is all over: even wake-houses and funerals, too; the commotion is enough to raise the dead. And a good Guyanese sendoff is too sober and without spirit(s) if there is no political talk at this time. Whispers are allowed.
In the already tumultuous run-up to this particular election, nobody is either sleeping or silent. Part of the Guyana elections watch is unflagging round-the-clock vigilance, so that no one pulls any fast one. Political players are reported to be sleeping with “one eye open” and head suspended off the ground. That way nothing passes the most stringent and critical of scrutiny.
In the US during the Alan Greenspan era, there came this phenomenon called Fed Watch; or, more precisely, Greenspan watch. The man spoke and the world economies shook; he did not utter a word, and all manner of interpretations in multiple languages and from many cardinal points tumbled forth one upon the other.
This had all the compulsion of a once-in-a-lifetime eclipse.
This is where Guyanese are presently; whether examined individually or in aggregate, there is this luminous splendor and ear-splitting thunder of 700,000 conversations (in both creolese and foreign accents) being carried on simultaneously, and all arriving at the same deadlocked places.
All those honest folks who always insisted with a straight face and a hand on a stack of sacred scriptures, that they are never, ever interested in politics, are today part of the standing room only, falling off the wagon crowd caught in the spider’s web of commentary and criticism and suspicion of who playing games, and who will be the eventual winner.
None wants to talk at any length about other matters, such as West Indies cricket, or the cost-of-living, or crime, or the border problem. None!
Elections watch is at such an excitable state in enchanted Guyana that the streets of Georgetown could be swamped and not many would care to object for too long. That is, with the exception of those whose homes are under water.