OP:ED – Reacting, protesting, targeting- all done wrong 

Feb 07, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – We are reacting in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons.  We are protesting for the wrong issues.  We are targeting the wrong people to express discontent, anger, resentments.  It is a waste of energy, sets us back further,  inflicts more damage on a society that has nothing going for it, save for our enormous natural resource gifts.  Surely, it must be recognised that we have a tremendous amount of ground to cover, countless days of work ahead of us, which our own settled mindsets and societal weaknesses make harder to overcome.  We have to learn, grow, up, grow better.  If not, the world will pass us by, and all the bountiful oil will not make much difference in Guyanese life.  That is, but for local politicians, and the foreigners coming here with a glint in their eyes, and walking away uninhibited with endless loads of our lavish treasures.

GHK Lall

First, it was Buxton, and for marijuana, of all things.  I concluded that we have got our heads in the wrong place.  Then, it was in Hopetown, where a road accident with two persons seriously injured served as the flashpoint for an outpouring of communal vehemence at a driver and property.  In both sorry developments, it is obvious that too many Guyanese community are too focused on what is in front of them, of the moment, on the old passions, and some of the old warps, with the usual unpardonable mayhem ensuing.

In Buxton and now Hopetown, the situations were of Guyanese venting anger in violent ways upon other Guyanese.  We prefer, are consumed, with breaking up inside our own homes, while expanding armies of foreigners strip our yards and fields and ranges and the broad swath of our lands with national patrimonies in gleeful abandon, and at will.  Gleeful abandon, because Guyanese are happy to be occupied with the same ancient narrow minded outlooks on life, how they decide that things ought to be, only for the foreign exploiters and foreign users to laugh at us behind their hands, busy themselves with reaping and plundering our riches, with we, the Guyanese people, being none the smarter, and none the more concerned about what is slipping through our grasp on a daily basis.  It is ‘at will’ by the foreigners because very few Guyanese are standing up in objection, making the foreigners the spotlight of their focus, in efforts to slow them down, to get them to comply with the way that things must be done, and how much we should get from such practices.

In Buxton and Hopetown, when what happened keeps on rearing their ugly heads, then old stereotypes gain a new lease on life, the polarization of our society widens, and with that we declare ourselves delighted.  Clearly, it has not registered that we are now in a different world, a different age in our existence, both of which have never been experienced before, and is still more challenging because so much of what has to be done is unknown to us.

When we take aim at each other in this great, bitter divide that is Guyana’s, then we are living in the same unchanging way of decades and centuries.  Targeting fellow citizens, no matter how unpalatable the circumstances, how justifiable it may seem in the heat of the moment, is an exercise that is doomed to failure, in that nothing that is positive is achieved.  The government is untouched and unfazed, the community is wrenched, and the foreigners carry on with their merry, very prospering toil.

But, it is not in Buxton and Hopetown that the very worst in Guyana, and of Guyana, comes into the bright lights.  For here we have learned men, experienced women, and a battalion of citizens, who similarly lash out at their fellow citizens for calling out the foreigners for their predatory behaviors in Guyana, with Guyanese feeling the brunt of their rapaciousness.  Despite, our wise Guyanese brothers and sisters knowing the long, destructive history of the white man all over the world, and throughout time, we have the unthinkable and the unpatriotic and this virtually unholy alliance that compels Guyanese to bash their friends and neighbors for daring to say that mistakes have been made, and that those costly mistakes are being perpetuated to a more devastating degree today.  The violence of the street has its parallels in the so-called intellectual and supposedly analytical violence being wreaked upon Guyana by Guyanese.

We relive the ground level madness of the villages of Buxton and Hopetown from offices and computers in Georgetown, in efforts to degrade and afflict fellow citizens.  Guyanese may think they win a tussle, or a point, but to what end?  We rage at insiders and brothers, while the foreigners enrich themselves.  Meanwhile, we target neighbours, and all are impoverished.  By the time we come to our senses, if ever, it could be too late.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

• GHK Lall, Hopetown, marijuana, protesting, targeting