Trouble brewing -unknown kinds, unthought of kinds

Last Updated on Sunday, 17 July 2022, 8:19 by Denis Chabrol

by GHK Lall
It was the majestic Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke, among illustrious others, who moaned in stirring song “Nobody knows the trouble I have seen”.  With respect to those musical towers, they haven’t seen, don’t know the troubles that we have brewing for this already troubled-riddled lost civilization called Guyana.  Thus, I do my duty and deliver the discomforting to my fellow Guyanese, so all can be forewarned, all ready for the travails that loom on our perpetually darkened horizon.

We have political trouble, which even the main man would dismiss as a ‘no brainer’ so obvious such is, that no restatement is required.  From there, I venture into unholy territory, and insist that we have an irreconcilable, irremediable racial problem.  Yes, I know it is a taboo subject, the equivalent of a national slur, but somebody has to say it, as known as it is, and denials and all.  Since the plaster is elections that bring out the worst racial impulses in us, then Elections ‘R’ Us, meaning, we are a racial and thoroughly racist society in that those seasons never depart from us.  So, we have a political cum racial problem, but that is only the start.

There was always a class divide, the smug, superior elitism amidst the so-called egalitarianism.  The advent of oil has succeeded in making that more distinctive in its savaging distinguishing features.  The pinstriped economists, sociologists, and political scientists could compress this now undeniable Guyanese environment into the jargon of the haves and have nots.  It may be jargon of the trade, but it is all too real.  Oh, I am not limiting myself to the much-maligned private sector, though it is well-settled in the camp of the haves; instead, I extend my embrace to encircle local political royalty (both corrupt and untarnished), the traitorous professional aristocracy, and the duchy of the cabal made up of golf-playing, scotch-guzzling, apartheid-associating Guyanese just glad to be near their foreign friends, really their accepted masters.  I recall the maharajahs of India during the British slavery by another description.

I am at just over the halfway point, and I think a quick recap is in order, so that we don’t lose track of the troubles we have.  We have political problems, racial problems, and class problems.  But we still have a couple more, what the bright ones would call a holistic approach; I settle for panoramic and prophetic.  Just listen to me!

The AFC has signaled that it is prepping to break ranks with the PNC, the perennial pariah of Guyana’s politics.  Like our oil deal, that perverse status is one-sided, viz., there is no PPP in this tango of two where pariah status is concerned, only the dreadful PNC.  The AFC apparently sees itself as icebreaker and gamechanger and difference-maker.  Again.  Oh, if it had only listened to me a little while back.  So, the AFC is thinking of linking up with the other parties.  It is illuminating on how this local 360-degree works.  A central plank in the AFC broke ranks with the PPP, and now it is back full circle.  How is that for political synergy, mathematical probability, and people integrity Messrs. (sorry, professors) Descartes and Archimedes!  For twist it or turn it, all the cows come back to the inviting nest (talk about mangled metaphors).

Because the same small parties that the AFC envision linking up with were and are nothing but PPP clones and moles operating under a cloud of promising rhetoric.  They are all now apparatchiks of the Freedom machinery, glue, and grease.  At least, they have had the good sense to keep silent and their heads down.  C’mon, give the people a break, what’s a little self-enriching ambition under the smoke of democracy, change, and freedom of choice?  As seen, this means that the PPP gets to achieve its lifelong vision, meaning, a one-party state, and the total control to which its leaders are addicted.

I now come to the PNC, and I hear Eddie Hooper with ‘Where are your friends now?’  Clearly, they have all gone away.  I think the party’s choices are narrow: become a full-out Black party.  Do away with the baggage of political correctness.  Articulate a muscular, militant nationalism.  There, I said it.  What choice does it have, unless it goes the way of the AFC, and reverse the Burnham break from the PPP, and return to the original fold?  How is that for retracing steps?  How about that for inclusive governance, and better yet ‘One Guyana?’  Now that would please my fellow Americans immensely, since it brings the desired peace and stability, but without domino effect, containment, CIA, AFL-CIO, TUC, and RC (guess who) hands.  My word, sometimes I am too smart for my own good.  Think about that PNC scenario, its options, and muddle ahead from there.  But I am not done yet.

The Middle Easterners are coming here, and it is not the British Invasion of America.  They have ploughshares, as in knowhow, how to do downstream, and how to make bricks out of stones (hay).  Now, this is a PPP problem, and the whispers intensify.  I’ll be delicate: division of the spirit.  If that’s too smart aleck and sophisticated (cute and clever), then try this one: religion.  The political fundamentalists were already screaming inside the PPP, and now this influx of a certain kind of foreigners, with a particular kind of history.  Please get my drift.  Before I miss this one, the Americans take serious issue with the Red Chinese being so dominant here, and now their troubles just doubled with the Arabian Invasion, compliments of the leader.  That’s showing how is boss, baby.

Like I said at the beginning, nobody knows the trouble that I have seen, and I am not Marian Anderson.  This is what my reading of things leaves me, where it leads me.  For sure, it is not scientific, but merely a combination of goat guts, snake scales, and frog feet.  I am finally done.