Dear Editor,
Too often, too many Guyanese fall over themselves in a rush to point out parallel or worse circumstances in America, whenever certain domestic issues are raised. It seems that the hard question, or serious comment, on things Guyanese invariably evokes comparisons to the North.
From the supposedly capable to the determinedly buffoonish, the melody is the same: “It happens in America.” This American Bandstand has attracted apologists, sycophants, and propagandists eager to prove their loyalty, and to justify their presence and price. Any mention of crime or corruption, and there is the inevitable rebuttal: “Look at America.” Today, I will not speak of the astuteness and meaningfulness – or lack thereof – surrounding, “It happens in America.” However, I seek to draw the attention and thinking of my fellow Guyanese (all of them) to a particular development in that same America, which serves as such a convenient refuge for diverting and obscuring.
The particular development to which I refer is this: President Obama is coming under increasing fire. It is a fire stoked by double digit unemployment. It is the heat generated by the presence of fifteen million Americans out of work. This issue is rapidly becoming his Achilles heel. But why do I bring this particular development up and ask Guyanese to focus on it?
It is because no one cares that the man has been in office for less than a year; it is because no one wants to remember that today’s distress is the result of accumulated political irresponsibility of the highest order; and it is because no one gives a damn that he has inherited this bitter chalice. It might be unfair, partisan, biased, and unrealistic. But none of this will reduce the holding of the President’s feet to the fire. He has to deliver, and deliver today, as in solutions through jobs and lots of them. He does not have the luxury of tomorrow. Even in these early days, his opponents sense they may have found the defining issue that could unseat him and his party. It is one that they have started to hammer away at relentlessly.
I bring this up for the benefit of those mothballed in the closets of 28 years and 17 years; and those who endeavour to camouflage local issues by wrapping them in selected pages of American realities. I urge them to look at this particular problem of the President’s and observe the pressure being brought to bear on him for answers.
Then, take this American standard (whether wrong or right) and apply it to the burning local issues of the day (generations), and hold the feet of our own leaders to the fire. Yes, if we can look to America and see it as a yardstick for other things Guyanese, why not this too?
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
