The arcs of self-contamination, self-destruction 

Jun 12, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I start with evergreens.  The hand that rocks the cradle sometimes suffocates it.  Forget biology and philosophy.  Think reality.  A man often is his own worst accuser.  He does nothing, and there is self-condemnation; he speaks, draws pen, and self-abasement reigns.  The arcs of self-contamination leading to self-destruction unfold slowly.  But when they do, there is a shrinking in horror, retreating in pity.  Parliament.  Procurement.  Information.  The big boss promised that there would be a delivery of transparency.  Competency, integrity, and incorruptibility in governance, he said.  Look what Guyana got in recent years.

The young and old stand at attention.  Male and female block the gates: no one passes here.  No one gets anything from here.  Get lost! those who seek certain things- sensitive things, corrosive things, destructive things.  Democracy, that’s called.  The big man calls that accountability.  A man has hollowed out himself with hollower words.  The result is Guyana’s emptiest barrel put on global exhibition.  Frankly speaking, it is how the system works, and can be twisted and manipulated by those who have the advantage of numbers.  One is enough.  It is what makes the arrogant display how subservient they can be to the too-clever-by-half, what is sick, what dangles them before all as caricatures, as creatures of some grotesque essence.

A young child dies in a hazy, troubling context, and a moment of silence could not have been allowed the first time around.  This is how Guyana’s most immaculate house is profaned.  This is a glimpse of the barbaric nature that’s now Guyana.  If not a fleeting moment to respect the fallen in a moment of national trauma, then it follows that not one damn piece of paper could be introduced into its corridors, not one motion allowed.  Loaded or not, not one motion of substance, for insights, that has the potential to render leadership nakedness public, or exposes governance perversities, can be allowed to pass.  That is not a national house of illumination.  It is a regional house of ill repute.  There is a certain kind of people who cavort within its walls.  The PPP Government chose well.  It is a poisoned well that comes back to haunt it.  Congratulations, Mr. President.  The Speaker of the House somehow faces himself?

A set of documents is sought, pursuant to law, only necessary information.  Guyanese get some paragraphs in newspapers.  The dictionary converted to the obscenity of political pornography.  Howzat for information!  How is that for the tragicomedy to which Guyana has been reduced!  Such are the perverse defences made to the house of citizens from the house of information.  I thought that age, as accelerated by random spirits, would know better, walk straighter.  The president may comfort himself that he put the right people in the right jobs.  He did.  Look at the hatchet jobs and garbage jobs they deliver.  Something oozes.  Mr. President, there is a stench in this land that hovers over high heads.  Mine is too low.  I point Guyanese to the highest office.  The guys overdid things.  Give a little, release something.  If the norm in government was done in the streets, words like thuggish and snakish would enjoy national popularity.  Burnham had ‘not a blade of grass.’  Ali delivered ‘not a scrap of information.  Thanks for nuthin; daktah commissionah of infomashun.

The most muscular presence in Guyana after oil is public procurement.  I think that tender awards are like a Yakuza or Cosa Nostra convention.  This one gets gambling, another swallows up prostitution, a third controls narcotics, and a fourth handles collections.  This is how the multibillion-dollar infrastructure and services portions of national budgets are managed in Guyana.  A meeting of the minds, and masterminds to move the procurement proceedings along.  Key operating procedures tell most of the story.  Don’t go there.  Don’t look there.  Don’t stop what’s going on there.  And don’t think twice about erecting roadblocks before those who blabber about getting value for money, and integrity in performance.  The president outdid himself: he spread the wealth outside the old boys’ club.  But even then, the linkage goes way back to that same club that is about total control, and circling the wagons to keep secrets in the family.  In Guyana, the Procurement Commission is like a family commission.  Keep everything there.

Summation: old and young, male and female, freely consent to hanging themselves in effigy.  Self-respect banished.  Self-humiliation rules.  Distorted narratives, distressed numbers, however slickly packaged, do not lessen the sewage that overpowers local consciousness.  No amount of money, or loyalty, or prominence should make a man or a woman barter intellect and integrity for the proud roles of lackey and flunkey.  From poetry, there is a creature that bears a close resemblance to those.  Mr. President, behold thy choices, thine handiwork.  This is the PPP Government.  A nocturnal street worker would hide his or her face.

(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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• GHK Lall, hard truths, self-contamination

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