Dear Editor,
What’s in a date? Here in Guyana it could be nothing, something, anything, and everything, especially now that an election is involved.
First, the nation was told that Gecom is not ready. Gecom disagreed rather sharply. Then, it was to give citizens the opportunity to embrace and celebrate Christmas in the usual rollicking Guyanese fashion. In 2014, it was that unheard of kind of Christmas – a moneyless one. No spending. Next, it is my understanding that the delay(s) was a courtesy from the ruling party to the opposition to afford it the opportunity to be more prepared – although none has said so publicly. Excuse for making that one up? I couldn’t resist.
Now here comes no less a personage than the Hon Minister of Foreign Affairs sharing news that an announcement of elections is “imminent.” So we have someone who might have difficulty differentiating between latitudes and longitudes, and as they relate to border demarcations, informing us that elections are “imminent.” One has to wonder if she truly understands what is involved in the use of “imminent.”
It is likely that “imminent” is best taken in the context of everyday Guyanese parlance. As examples, it could very well be a synonym for ‘soon’ or ‘just now’ or ‘right now.’ Of course, as resident Guyanese know full well, those freely and casually used words have absolutely no relation to time, or its urgency, and lack any sense of immediacy. I do hope that the Hon Minister would stick to her portfolio and concentrate on geography and leave chronometry, as it pertains to elections, to those better equipped.
Editor, on a really serious note, this entire business about elections and a date and time has been degraded into a running farce and a stale national joke; nobody is laughing, and people are getting more incensed by the hour. So while the President and his brains trust scramble and come up almost daily with the creative and disruptive, through new and unpersuasive antics, the clock ticks fatefully. And time is against the ruling party and its leader. He might look at all of this and think of himself as a jolly good fellow in the mould of the Michelin man, but in these unsettled times serious miscalculations have already occurred.
I must say it again: The PPP does not have the numbers. It knows this, its opponents know this, and the nation knows this, too. It is why there is this dancing on pinheads, and then the inevitable inundation of offal about who is ready, where is off-limits, process, and the like ad infinitum. Here is the bottom line of the bottom line: the numbers are not going to change, no matter how many subterfuges are rolled out, and no matter how much time is bought. And that is simply that.
Thus, I say to the President et al: stand-up, be men for once, and bite the pill (it is bitter). The party is over. In this way, monies gathered over the years from multiple sources can be spent earlier and contentedly.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
