Sometimes you’re sailing along, minding your own business, and an idea will land on you, totally unsolicited, that is so startling in its acuity it almost makes you jump. It happened to me last week. I’m going into one of my favourite stores in town. There’s a taxi parked outside (Pipey, I later learned, was the driver) and a sign on the trunk, written in dialect, reads, “Bun Bad Min.” It stopped me in my tracks. I cannot remember the last time an unsolicited idea hit me the way this one did. I instantly saw the brilliance of the thought. Just stop and consider for a moment how Guyana would be transformed overnight if we could find a way to get rid of the “bad min” attitudes among our people and our leaders. Applied across the board, that philosophy would have a dramatic and panoramic effect on almost every negative condition in this country; it would be a transformation to behold.
Imagine, for starters, what would happen to all these contentious projects which have been hanging around our necks recently like the proverbial albatross. With “bad min” out of the way, government would cordially give us the real story on Amaila Falls and the Chinese fishing licences, and the opposition will be disposed to reconsider the budget cuts. We would learn the thinking behind Sooba’s appointment as Town Clerk, or how we got saddled with outdated medicines, or the real story with the City Hall funds, 
and why a comparatively small investor ended up a major owner in the Marriott. Overnight, everything would be on the table including exactly how much farm land the Trinis control here and exactly how much money NICIL has in its vault.
The turnaround would be dramatic. Christopher Ram and Freddie will have nothing more to write about, and the ‘Dem Boys Seh’ column will become redundant because whatever the boys reveal they know will already be known to all. In this radical information shift, with everything out in the open like cellophane, Trans-parency International here will be out of a job. In fact, the international Transparency International folks will be pelting down here to do a detailed report on this dramatic change model which Vishnu Bisram could then offer to India, earning Guyana significant UN accolades.
Of course the “bun bad min” approach will have a substantial effect on private behaviours, too. With the negative and even spiteful attitudes no longer operating, our lives would be transformed. Apart from the obvious decline in violence, minibus drivers will stop cutting in, taxis will park where they’re supposed to, and, without being fined a dollar, business places in town will stop dumping their garbage in the street; we may even see store owners taking their litter home and depositing it in their residential garbage cans which will be functional because the “bad min” enveloping the Mayor’s office is over. Motorists will be stopping and waving pedestrians across the street instead of almost running them over, and the thunderous sound systems in cars will give way to Bose headphones.
But as you can well imagine, it is in the public sphere, particularly in the political arena, that the “bun bad min” principle will have the most dramatic effect. It is positively delicious to contemplate what would happen in our Parliament. Having “bad min” out of the picture would make it a completely different place. With rancour checked at the door, the Speaker might even fall asleep in the resulting calm, and instead of exchanging insults MPs will be sharing a brew at the bar near to Parliament; instead of political invective, the debate will be about who’s picking up the bill. Political truces will proliferate. Ralph and Moses will be invited to Freedom House for a conciliatory seven-curry dinner, and, to top it off, both the Corbin and the Granger factions of APNU will be guests at the head table. Okay, some of this may seem like science fiction, but with those immutable positions gone anything is possible; notice the recent handshake between Barack Obama and Raul Castro, with Fidel later asserting “Bravo.”
For those of you who are sceptical of this radical shift ever taking place here, there are some recent small developments which are worth noting. We have seen, just this week, the government and the majority-of-one both very amicable to the Ombudsman appointment in one exchange, and in another the opposition indicating, “Well, we might be disposed to deal with the financial regulations bill.” We have the reassuring sight of some “federal” participation in the clearing of trenches in the city, and the need to put an end to the flooding in Georgetown seems to have finally found common ground, or common water. So maybe the inclination is already under way; perhaps the political manipulators have seen the same taxi with the “bun bad min” sign.
In anticipation of the shift, as tensions relax so will personal behaviours. We can envisage Ashni Singh, with fewer meetings, having time for the treadmill, Roger Luncheon finally opting to shave, David Granger wearing the more approachable bow-tie as opposed to the stern solid-green shirt, and Gail Teixeira speaking more softly in Parliament, although not smoking less ‒ we have to be realistic here. We might even find Anil Nandlall eliminating those arcane polysyllabic words nobody understands, and we will see no more of the one-sided NCN television presentations where a government minister is being ‘grilled’ by an absurdly sympathetic government employee.
I don’t know about you, but I would be delighted to have a slimmed-down Ashni, a clean-shaven Roger, a bow-tied David, a less preachy Anil, and a reduction of NCN pap. In fact, I have already visualized a public campaign to push the taximan’s idea. We get Dennis Dias to design a billboard featuring Picasso’s famous ‘bird of peace’ and highlighting the phrase “Bun Bad Min” in Roman script. We put one on Brickdam in front of Parliament, one in front of Freedom House, one in front of Congress Place, and one in front of the Private Sector Commission office on Waterloo Street. Dennis also prints small handbill versions of the billboard, and we distribute them to eating places all over town, so, for instance, you buy a whole-wheat puri at Shanta’s you get a handbill. We could ask the US Embassy to pay for the campaign (Dennis doesn’t come cheap) in that well-funded democracy development programme they want to set up here; the only hitch is that the Americans may not understand the dialect term, but Adam Harris could explain it to them. Besides, overall it’s a politically correct phrase, and we know how hard they are to find.
Of course I’m being somewhat sardonic here. How could we possibly execute this fundamental and sweeping change in what is apparently an entrenched position? It would essentially be an alteration of human nature, and that’s impossible. But the Berlin Wall came down; Batista was overthrown in Cuba; and Guyanese adapted to traffic lights immediately after being without them for decades, so the impossible happens. Besides, this idea is powerful on three levels: it follows the usual dialect emphasis on brevity – in just three words it identifies the problem and also gives the solution; you immediately see the wisdom of it; and, thirdly, it proposes an action that every individual can engage right now, today – we don’t have to wait for some unwieldy 32-member committee to be formed. This is an idea that is obviously right for us at this time, so I’m making two moves: I plan to locate Pipey and thank him for his creation, and then I’m going to make a “Bun Bad Min” sign, hang it on the front of my residence, and hope other people do the same. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful New Year’s gift to Guyana if those three words somehow took hold?
