When things bad, people turn to God

Apr 21, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- Things have to be bad with the People’s Progressive Party.  Really bad.  When spiritual sanctuaries become more popular than taverns and offshore financial havens, then there is a revolution sweeping across Guyana, and the PPP is in the forefront of it. Everybody should say hi. to President Ali for leading the way, with Zulfi, Susie, Ashni and Nandy following docilely but energetically. I love it.  All for God. Hopefully, God for all. Of them.  I believe in that gracefulness.  Am expecting to hear or read that Gail suddenly remembered that there is a God, and follows the Bishop, now a cardinal of virtue (a certain kind). I love this PPP, this Guyana and what it is doing for it. Life has taught that when things ‘baad, peeple tun to gawd.’

Hindu warriors in Christian houses of peace. Christian operators in mosques. Muslims in mandirs and churches. Overnight, there is revival and reunion with Guyana now one big, happy, national family. Why do I feel left out? Anyhow, I am in good company, the Mighty Barry J.  He doesn’t have time for such mundane matters as God and family; all duck curry and apple pie, he is now.  Why! The man is a god unto himself.  Like Chairman Mao, PPP Chairman Jagdeo is a firm believer in that familiar one: religion is the opium of the people. No wonder ole Mao knockdown untold millions of Chinese.

Considering, how PPP luminaries flock to spiritual places across Guyana, I am rethinking my own presence in such places, and for a simple reason.  Any place that some folks go, they profane it.  No matter how profound that place is, their mere presence is a perversity to it.  But, why, dare I inquire, all this interest with places of prayer, of genuine devotion, of true believers?  I am sorry to disappoint by refusing to point to later this year, as in anywhere from August to November, when there will be judgement day in Guyana and for Guyanese.

Me, I am not worried.  Why worry, when I didn’t covet any property, or had any money stick to my hand, or flat-out lied to Guyanese.  Be they PPP, PNC, or AFC, I have not and will not deceive any Guyanese. Submitted as the 11^th commandment; the gospel according to G.  Some delicacy is called for, since I am getting dangerously close to crossing a line. Now, an invitation is extended to all supporters of the three major parties, and worshippers of their leaders.  An invitation framed as a question: which one of the PPP’s, PNC’s, and AFC’s supporters can say that their own people have not led them astray, with one slick verbal posture or political composition after another?

The other question still hangs pregnant, close to the visible 7-8 months of it, and near enough to hear the unborn kicking.  Why is it that the putrid now find themselves in house of peace?  Perhaps, some folks got religion.  A warning is timely: God does not take kindly to people trying to make a fool out of him.  Just as perilous, God has a problem when men and women of high power (and odor) turn poor people into mummies and dummies.  Some are saying that the PPP is fanning out to different religious houses, and knocking the PNC and AFC from their former pride of place.  What is happening is not fanning out; it’s a hurricane blowing a tsunami into a place that is below sea level.  God help Guyanese with these false prophets, these kings of deformity, these lovelies that remind of Jezebel.  The things that men do for power.  It is wisdom itself, the pursuit of power, because he who hast the power has access to the money.

The big intellectuals, and the Guyanese ones who fancy themselves to be, talk about resource curse.  They are as right as rain, and just as overwhelming.  Look at what the arrival of oil in Guyana has inflicted upon the PPP, PNC, and AFC.  Checkout those who speak in tongues.  If it is not gibberish, it is trash recycled as leadership truths.  There is one, Dr. Rhetoric, who all by himself pushed ordinary Guyana into the realm of the asthmatic and rheumatic.  One leader is Dr. Rhetoric, the more senior one is Dr. Paranoiac.  ‘He frikken peeeple.  He frikken fuh taak.’  He ‘frikken’ his own shadow, because of what love for oil made him do.  Observe, though, that when he demonizes and criminalizes those hot on his heels, and applying heat to his face, how he is born again.  A real holy roller is that political character.  Those with complaints can lodge them with the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Holy See.

So, here we are in the fourth month of the 25^th year of the second millennium (is it?), and there is this flurry, this surge, drowning the places where God lives.  Some folks have no conscience.  They just wouldn’t keep their stench and nastiness to themselves.  They have to spread both all over, leave a broad strain of the tawdry wherever they go, stop, visit.  Why all this activity?  The Chinese say that it is the year of the wood snake.  I say that it is the year that begins with an E, and lives and dies for that same E.

(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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• hard truths, mandirs, Muslims, People's Progressive Party, President Ali

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