Dear Editor,
I break my Christmas fast to express disappointment at my brother, His Worship, Pandit Ubraj Narine, Mayor of Georgetown. His choice of subjects, and the way he went about his delivery left much to be desired. My position on discriminatory practices by the PPP Government is well-known, needs no reintroduction, speaks its own volumes. Relative to Mayor Narine, his frontal assault, through his choice of words, did not represent the soundest judgement, I would argue too little judgement, if any. Nevertheless, it is pleasing that Mayor Narine apologized immediately, unreservedly.
Having said this unambiguously, I study reactions that the mayor brought on his head, his spirituality, his citizenship, and his right to continuing official existence. Of course, there were the reflexive fusing of the mayor to the PNC, and all of the negatives that it has come to embody in this country. To date, there have been salvos of scorn; branding and dismissing of the man; a stream of frenzied rage, righteous indignation, and holy outpourings of distaste, denunciation, and outright damnation. I read, listened, absorbed. My first conclusion is that Guyanese are rightminded; first-class citizens speaking out against palpable wrongs, setting high standards, without deviation.
It is inspiring. Then, I recalled other things, and I asked myself whether those going after Mayor Narine are not overdoing things, not engaging in a production, are not pantomimes performing on the public stage. In other words, it is that the same people bashing the mayor are the worst of unreconstructed hypocrites, through their double standard that reeks, however charitably viewed. Consider.
A man assaulted a daughter of Guyana (a sister under the skin, a citizen as equal as any), and all that the media had for outrage was conspicuous silence, a great calm sea of indifference. The same ones now hollering for fire and brimstone on Ubraj Narine’s head (many times his scalp) were afflicted with laryngitis then when the Bush Lot matter made the rounds; that woman brutally beaten down escaped being a priority. Perhaps, due to the old, ugly politics of Guyana, that felony allowed a man to board a plane without a finger lifted by an agent of the State to delay his passage. And without a voice from daily life raised to insist that it was criminal and that the injured, humiliated woman is entitled to the same justice due every Guyanese. To my knowledge, the alleged perpetrator is a friend of the PPP Government and its controllers. I suppose that affords immunity from the law, and a free pass, or the gentlest of disapprovals from the critics.
What applies to Mayor Narine, must also apply with equal vigour, comparable fury, and parallel stridency to the batterer of the woman of Bush Lot. Maybe, it is a family matter, and best handled in the manner that friends deal with these things. After all, what is a little beatdown, like the Mighty Sparrow use to sing in his peculiar expression of love? Where, my fellow upset and enraged Guyanese, was the love then? Not partisan love for the alleged perp, but the victim? Where were the women ministers, and the other women now waging war on Ubraj Narine? And as an aside, I must wonder what the reaction would be if a PNC parliamentarian were to mention that word or instrument (a certain kind of toy) beginning with the letter ‘d.’ I can hear the reverberations: goon, hooligan, crazed, ad infinitum.
Still further, one must observe where all these vociferous, vehement upstanding Guyanese of truth and justice were when a man was shot like a dog in his bed, with his wife next to him. Thank God, she is still around to speak to truth, and to derail any of the usual business of ‘fear for life’ and ‘suspicion of a weapon.’ For dead women, just like dead men, also tell no tales that shatter settled sagas of what went down, and how things should stay. I would be encouraged if there are citizens-conscientious, consistent, and of character-who vent wrath, take a stand, and stand for right, regardless of Indian or Black, or PPP or PNC. It continues to be a huge personal disappointment.
On another note, in the circumstances triggered by Mayor Narine, I am impressed by the efficiency of the Guyana Police Force (and its unnamed advisers). DPP Office? Attorney General Office? Office of the President or PM? Never have I seen such speed, such rigor, and such burning zeal to slap an erring citizen down. As said -impressive. And, as if not to be left from the party, there was the army delivering the coup de grace, in what I call ‘dishonorable discharge’ of former Staff Sergeant Narine. My God! we do get things done in spades when minds are put to it. I salute this overwhelming application of power at the source of problems, a la Colin Powell, this declaration of total war on the mayor.
Where was the police brass and its advisers in all those suspicious killings and less bloody incidents involving abuse against women? Where did efficiency and the scales of justice tumble? If these are not the highest hypocrisies and double standards at the official and civic level, then this is the Garden of Eden.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
