A City Hall photograph of shame

The cliché about a picture being the descriptive equivalent of a thousand words remains relevant because like every cliché it conveys some essential truth. A stark picture of someone standing in the open air, arms outstretched in despair, besides a dead animal prostrate on the East Coast public road, conveys in an instant, without a single word, our widespread disregard in Guyana for the safety and life of animals, even the ones who serve us faithfully in some way. A photograph of a woman in a Georgetown hospital bed recovering from some horrific assault jolts us into immediate recognition of the stream of violence unleashed by men in our society upon helpless women. To see a grainy picture of the incomplete Amaila Falls Road reminds one, in a flash, of the array of irregularities and confusions that attended and still attend that project.

On the recent front page of Stabroek News there is an Arian Browne photograph taken in City Hall showing our “two Town Clerks”, seated mere feet from each other, each trying to achieve territorial control, like two motorists on Regent Street, blocking traffic and refusing to move, both contending “is me parking spot.” In a moment, the picture crystallizes the demise of our city.

The spectacle captured in that photograph, and inevitably elaborated on video, is debilitating; it is pitiful. If not already on the internet, it is certain to end up there. And what a spectacle: persons shouting into microphones, or flinging documents around; voices trying to override voices; adult individuals wrestling