Politics is, well it is not as held out to be

Oct 27, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall:

Kaieteur News – There is good news for Guyanese.  Some bad news managed to creep in rather stealthily into the business of today.  It is politics.  The good news is that politics is not the big deal that it is made out to be.  So, it is a fine opportunity to stop taking pols and self too seriously.  From America to Guyana, for the most part, the judgement was that there are good for a joke.  Pols, that is.  They are figures that provide the kind of escape to ease the stresses of the day, environment, and having to deal with ornery people.  Ornery, not extraordinary, it should be noted.  Let’s see what the lizard’s entrails and bat eyes say.

Up Stateside, there is Trump.  Nobody on this planet needs any further introduction.  The name alone is gut-wrenching.  To think too long about what he actually represents is to call a seizure upon oneself.  There was Biden who wisely slipped out of the way.  It was the last clearheaded thing that he did, which emphasizes that old saying: a mind is a terrible thing to allow to age too rapidly, to go to pot too freely.  Mitch McConnel decided that it was time to hang up the gloves and hang around the bluegrass of his beloved Kentucky.  There is always the Kentucky Derby to get his blood going.  So, what is Senator Lindsay Graham waiting for, another civil war to break out, so that he can secede from the US Constitution?  It is best to go out while on top than to go feet first and strapped to a gurney.  Is anybody in America listening?  How about the US Embassy in Georgetown?  Please pass the word along, as a favour to a stranger trapped in a stranger land.

In Guyana, the situation is, well, is anybody really interested in what goes on politically in Guyana?  In this burg, politics isn’t the noblest of arts.  No sirree, Bob!  In Guyana, politics is the next best substitute for entertainment.  Not Entertainment Tonight, but entertainment day and night.  There is a full troupe of jokers.  Here in Guyana, the pols walk with their own laff track, i.e., the people who laff at their jokes, no matter how old or flat.  Guyanese are so conditioned to laugh at the entertainment Olympics run by their leading politicians that the professional ‘laffers’ start doing so before a word has been uttered or a funny face made.  Barbara Streisand or Audrey Hepburn, they are not.  Take the nation’s leading jester, His Excellency, President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali.  Something in his aristocratic head has made him fancy himself to be a master entertainer.  He is slapstick and wisecracker galore, a walking evening (and daytime) at the Improv.  Entertainer Ali growls and howls, as the spirit takes him to unknown places.  He bays at the man in the moon, because his sense of comedic timing whispers that it is a PNC competitor.  The leading national entertainer crackles and bristles with barely contained electricity.  My humble recommendation is that he should consider selling some of that excess energy to the GPL, for that would keep Guyanese on a lit path for the rest of this year.  Frankly, it is frightening some of the states to which the Guyanese head of state drives himself.  A laff is what he is after but comes up blank most of the time.

Vice President Jagdeo prefers to hold himself out as a serious man, all business, no time for fun and frolic.  The grayness on his face and the whiteness around his mouth are the giveaways: a leader more acidic than comic, one with the weight of several oil reservoirs on his head.  Talk about touchy and grouchy and brimming with hostility, and that is the Duke of Jesters, Jagdeo.  Jagdeo is no common joker, though, as his fare is more on the sophisticated side.  At least, he fools himself into thinking so.  Better contract management is one of his favourite laugh lines.  His management is either a secret or in tatters, the contract is untouchable, so what in tarnation is he making better?  Does he even know what better means?  Still, it is his idea of belly-busting entertainment.  Donald Trump had one of his own to perk up jaded Americans: Haitians are eating Frisky and Garfield out in Ohio.  People in the Red States saw cannibals.  Voters in the Blue ones thought they heard depraved indifference to the sanctity of Coloured people’s standing.  A one-time American president is up in arms over sanctity of cat life; a Guyanese president is conveniently shackled hand and foot which gives him cover to shuffle around sanctity of contract.  Is somebody kidding me (to be taken literally)?

Opposition Leaders Norton and Hughes (one is senior, the other second) have no reason to crack a smile.  Since they can’t, nobody else in Guyana should.  Seriously, ever see any of the two smile?  Mr. Norton is more of a silent film era practitioner: he would rather say nothing, has no lines to say.  About anything.  PPP rigging is an exception, of course.  Oil, though, well that would be a violation of his sabbath.  His sabbath is seven days a week and unlike fasting Hindus, it doesn’t come to a stop.  He should be that strangest of creatures in politics: an ascetic, a man committed to the hermetic.  Nigel Hughes, on the other hand, is a 24-7 radio station all by himself.  Try to stop him palavering.  He is a serious humorist: no conflict of interest in his political practice and his Exxon practices.  Cor blimey! Is this a backward country or what!  He has potential.  The issue is to be what and with what in mind?  To clear the air, I like a good joke more than most folks.  Just share a few convulsing ones that leads to doubling up on mirth.  I could use one, with Guyana being where it is and how it is, thanks to all four of these brothers.

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

 

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• extraordinary, Opposition Leaders, President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, the entertainment Olympics, The grayness

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