Latest update May 21st, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 28, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column
Kaieteur News – “High” and “very high” and “hard” and “climbing” and “going up” and “gone up.” With the possible exception of ‘hard’ the mistake could be made that this is about some spacecraft heading into the deepest parts of outer space. Regrettably, it is of nothing so exotic. It is the mundane of Guyanese existence made miserable by cost-of-living afflictions, as reported by Stabroek News. Given that SN’s travels and inquiries took its people from Vigilance on the East Coast to Herstelling on the East Bank [Demerara in both instances], I think that the cost-of-living crisis should be declared a national epidemic. With SN’s series now at number 46, there should be no argument from anyone from any quarter. Sufferers are plentiful by any reckoning.
I look at those pictures of rank-and-file Guyanese and ask myself how they manage. The poignancy of their words in this the richest society in the world puts to shame President Ali’s bustling outreaches, and his claims to caring. Whatever his government has done, it has all fallen woefully short, pound the poor in Guyana into the dirt. Ordinary citizens have expenses, they need to eat, and to live with the peace of hard-earned dignity. It is due to them, and especially at this time of grand tidings. It is due even more in the cascade of daily, momentary, announcements in the media about a billion for a bridge or a barge; or another several hundred million for a pump station. Guyanese will trudge across those bridges on their increasingly forlorn journeys. But to where, and for what? For what, when they cannot afford basics adequate to their needs? This is the corrosive irony of the richest people in the world, and how it rusts them into stagnation of the spirit.
Dr. President: Guyana is today a multibillion-dollar country in American currency, and there are so many Guyanese living on the periphery of beggary. I respectfully remind Excellency Ali that this is happening under his watch, notwithstanding his flights of words, and his grandstanding. No amount of leadership showmanship and sleek, slippery governorship can deny the plight of the poor in Guyana’s population. Others may delight in telling President Ali what gives him a glow. I share with him what he needs to know, and how he looks for it. This is how it is, sir. I am troubled, for all is not well with the souls of too many Guyanese, and the President comes out looking the worst for it, a leader not up to the challenges of his times. If there was no money, some understanding would sink in, mean something. There is plenty of money, so there is little patience with the pain of cost-of-living, growing intolerance for all the shallowness that emerges from those elected to lead and serve, but of which they have faltered severely.
I march past the GY$5 billion that the Office of the President has custody of; the appropriate holding account could give an update as to its status, how well it fares this late in the year. But leaving aside that tidy sum, I humbly recommend that the president takes off his red fireman’s hat and start governing with a truly holistic vision. Its tentacles must reach into every nook and nowhere corners of Guyana. President Ali must stop rushing around putting out fires. Someone in OP should bite down on their mouthguard and whisper to President Ali that he is a national leader and not a performer in an open-air vaudeville. Leadership inertia on cost-of-living barbs and bludgeons cannot continue in this sickly pickney of a country, this poor little rich child, that is hungry, frail, and frightened. If all that oil means is roads and another round of celebratory drinks for those doing the building, then its curse is alive and kicking, even screaming, perhaps. Just consult with SN’s series, and there are all those Guyanese screaming in terror. No citizen of this El Dorado should be talking, worrying, bowing before a crippling cost-of-living condition. For those upset by my use of Spanish, oil kingdom serves just as well.
Guyanese have too much to be without so much. To the President I say this: I come with peace pipe that is already lit. Though its smoke can get in the eyes, decisions still have to be made, and the people taken care of, which they have not been. Come up with a programme. Build a structure. Implement a standard. And in all of those, let relief be the word, the reality, that surges forward into homes and when it is time to eat. When Guyanese don’t have enough to eat, enough to manage, then there is more than leadership failing. There is leadership falling. Please do these things now, Excellency, and it is better not to wait for December and Christmas, as if the Santa Claus effect would be greater then. Guyanese need cost-of-living eases now. It has already too long in coming.
(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.)
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