Dear Editor,
LGE (results) are all the rage currently. Like most fads, this one will fade into vague memory soon enough. Still, I write to share the perspective of a non-voter. I warn that what follows is harsh and unsparing.
I am sorry, but I will neither sanitise nor legitimise the political, managerial and other debacles that prevail under the umbrellas of City Hall or LGE. I did not vote. For what and for whom? In terms of the former, change would have been nice, but when has that happened in this town and country? Term it whatever works: malaise, disgust, discontent. The treadmill runs serenely on: the best this country does is run furiously standing still. Citizens go along for the regular ride. None should be challenged to determine who is the jackass here. Meanwhile, everyone talks unceasingly about the rule of law, and none more so than the utterly lawless; and incorrigibly debauched about standards and reforms. Just business as usual.
As to the second part of my initial question, “for whom”, my answer is both revealing and sad. First, congratulations and best wishes are extended to the new mayor, Pandit Ubraj Narine. This is the very first time I am reading, hearing, or knowing anything about the new mayor. Never heard of him. This should be discomforting for both of us; especially me. The situation is made even worse – the next disturbing thing – since I just discovered that His Lordship represents my own area. That one falls on me alone. Now I must dig myself out of this almost 70% (absentee voters) state of nonexistence.
Anyone who thinks that I don’t care about garbage collecting, street cleaning, road repairing and the rest must think again starting from scratch, on two feet, and with a clear head. There has to be the thoughtfulness on why rates and taxes are still billions (I believe) in arrears. What is happening here? What was negotiated and happening when old businesses flourished and new ones kept building to raise the skyline? How can any institution in a poor society function like this? Concerned citizens must question sharply why the commercial powers that clog the drains and streets and banking system exhibited (through proxies) so many anxieties over parking meters.
In short, these and the rest left unmentioned, boil down to this: no taxes collected, no parking fees welcomed, no real revenue stream means nothing fixed, garbage firms owed, and on and on ad nauseum. I see this as a confluence of crises: a crisis of confidence and at the core is a crisis of fundamentals: honesty and integrity, character and credibility. Forget the fancy phrases. The perception is that there is a set of irredeemable vagabonds infesting City Hall. Here is my position: why engage in aiding and abetting by voting?
There is a company of swindlers and extortionists, collectors and confidence men that has to be removed. Period. Top, bottom, and middle. Start over clean and I will vote. That venerable institution named Alan Fenty wrote about saving the city in a recent SN column. My first reaction was: is this town worth saving? I think it would be more constructive to pull the plug, pronounce the twitching corpse dead, and put everyone out of the deep, thick swamp of misery.
Yes, I know: just not done; not like that; things don’t work that way. Then sorry: I will not vote for an occasional handout here and a morsel of pity there, as though I am a welfare case seeking favours. This stance is costly. Call it the American Way. No wonder the great mass of the great Guyanese diaspora looks down on this place, and will have nothing to do with it. Too many losers supporting more losers to perpetuate an entrenched losing way of life. To answer Mr Fenty, I say build a new city that involves moving minds from the medieval bog to the modern. Let the city fend for itself, as it has been forced to do in its agonising death spiral.
Next, I hear the newest lunacy of electoral change in the works for 2020 with LGE functioning as an early leading indicator. Who gives a damn about LGE anyway? If LGE is this pertinent, then optometrists must be doing massive Christmas business: they have succeeded in introducing colour blindness across the board. That is more major than the oil finds. Anyhow, I said it since around early 2016: 2020 is settled, sealed, and signed. The Opposition PPP has already spiritually conceded (loud noises aside); as it knows its goose is cooked. The foreigners (the A people) may be sympathetic to the horse (party), but they do not like the jockey (guess who?). So, if anyone thinks that the outsiders will chance leaving local oil in the hands of those local
people, then I regret being compelled to burst that foolish bubble and put an end to this nonsense. As said before, every election in this country has been determined by foreigners, and that was when oil was absent. So, what about now? Or as Matt Munro pleaded down the years, “Why not now?” This is simply good horse sense. Oil sense, too.
Last, I do agree that Guyanese voters are angry, unhappy, and distressed; only a few are over quality of life and governance. The majority are angry about restrictions on the constitutional right to help themselves at taxpayer’s expense; about the shakedowns that have (somewhat) dried up; and about government failures (proliferating). But angry means neither stupid nor reckless nor clueless. Staying away from LGE is not crossing the floor; and sitting on hands does not mean committing mass ethnic suicide in the big bash of 2020. While I have always liked shared governance, the government is already saddled with enough roguery of its own; it does not need the baggage that comes with the opposition.
Disturbingly, what all of this means for this place is more of the same runaway lawlessness and brigandage that are now vital to its very survival mechanism.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
