‘Calculated chatter’

Dear Editor,

 

Some words and phrases are making the rounds in post-election Guyana. They embody an insistent fomenting and escalating of race-pandering, fear-mongering, and social dividing.

Even the euphemisms, preposterous and transparent, fail to conceal these sinister intentions to disrupt, to roil, and to cleave apart.

The elections were rigged; there was cheating and robbing.

These unburied spectres from decades ago quickly exhumed to inflict anxiety upon the vulnerable, and inculcate animosity amongst the gullible. Next, there is the calculated chatter about “witch-hunting” and “political headhunting.” One does not have to be an expert palm reader to comprehend the ethnic lines drawn and embedded therein; it might be less caustic, less direct, but no one is fooled.

These are the coded, crooked cards played and hands displayed. Propagandize. Terrorize. Divide. Objectives realized.

Editor, the following questions are believed timely and, therefore, raised: If the shoe was on the other foot, would the former ruling party (when it returned) have kept the equivalent of some of the known persons sent packing?

Who would keep paid ghost writers with whom so much mischief has been associated? Why continue to maintain a painfully useless (and expensive) GuySuCo Board? And so on and so forth.

I would have serious problems (integrity, credibility, competence) in co-existing with many of the fallen, and the still to fall. I would harbour only utter disdain for those seniors who lack the honour and dignity to go graciously, and who insist on their entitlement to stay. I tell you that I would have moved and acted quicker, wider, higher.

This is the level of disgust and anger that prevails.

Now the effort and antics of the spokesmen and propaganda artists might appear puerile, even asinine to some. Yet there is method to the irreversible madness.

Instigate so as to agitate. And in so doing, rekindle relevance and prepare the platform for tomorrow.

There is more to come. This racehorse is one that will be beaten to its knees. It is already blinkered. If not handled carefully, it might trample the riders.

 

Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall