OPINION: Ali, Jagdeo, Norton, Hughes – Guyana’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Last Updated on Wednesday, 10 July 2024, 11:22 by Writer

By GHK Lall

From the pages of the Holy Bible, we got the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The names given to them and now etched in hearts all over are Conquest, War, Famine, Death. From the sacred soil of this Motherland, Guyana, I give my fellow Guyanese, the Four Horsemen of Oil. The names I give them represent the nature of their presence, the essence of their being. Dismissal. Disgust. Desultory. Disappointment. In the fullness of their individual substance, there is darkness; from deep in the magnitude of their combined strength, there is more darkness. And fear. And timidity. And a hollowness so comprehensive as to be visible, audible, and palpable. Guyanese see them and recoil. I do. Citizens hear them and they flinch. I do. The hopeful search for some strength in them, and courage, and care. They lose on each occasion. I hang my head in shame. I cry. Not for me, for the longest part of my journey is over.

President Ali has earned the name I give him: Dismissal. The national leader pretends to be of steel and is made of nothing but straw. No backbone on oil. Former president Jagdeo is due the honor of his new name and title: Disgust: a leader with so many scales, so many shadows, plagued by so many sicknesses, that revulsions rise, then rise some more. On this oil, he coils himself, into a ball for the white man to kick around at will. He coils to strike at people like me, who call on him for one thing only: do something tangible and that is the totality of truth and audacity with this oil. Opposition Leader Norton is now the proud claimant of his crowning achievement. Desultory. Who can be more desultory than he? A warrior now rolled into a newspaper. It is a two-page one: no striking power, a presence that diminishes in the hurricane that is not Category Five, but merely the puff of a breath. If he is not of what is desultory with this oil, then there are no such words as audacity, potency, and majesty. The majesty of a leader rising and standing up for his fellows is lost on him. Then there is the leader, Nigel Hughes, and in his hands and to his face belongs what comes next. Disappointment. When the call of duty to country rings with clarion clarity, he is found wanting. Conflicted and cornering himself. What hibernated and fallowed, has little of the fertility expected, is now the epitome of the hollow. A pretender to the presidency of a people pounded into poverty and the bigotries of those still latching on to the title of white supremacy. A man of insight and energy now self-condemned by superior considerations. What relationship, what obligation, could be more sacrosanct than that due to Guyanese?

What we have in President Ali, VP Jagdeo, OL Norton, and OL Hughes are the Guyanese version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Surrender not conquest. Retreat not war. Failure from the famine within them. And the death of Guyanese hopes. Instead of one of them, or any combination of them, or all four of them rising against the American oil conquistadores, they have settled for abject surrender to the conquests of Woods and Routledge. Stand up, my brothers, shout out, my peers, for Independence from this oil yoke around our necks, this chastity belt castrating our manhood. To Excellencies Ali and Jagdeo, I say, there is nothing that can be more about sanctity than the will of Guyanese. Their dreams and aspirations, these poor brown and black and bronze people who look like me. And they too, just in case they forgot. To Honorable Opposition Leaders Norton and Hughes, I insist that the first 100 days begins today. In fact, the day that clock started ticking a long time ago. Guyanese need to be independent of what makes dependents of all of them. Even the connected and rich, powerful and famous are dependent on the benevolence of the white masters, Woods and Routledge. Tell them, Mr. Routledge, tell them back in Houston, Texas, that this one black man says this. I despise Exxon’s deceptions. I abhor Exxon’s prejudices and profanities. I spit on Exxon’s contract, and those responsible for it, those upholding it. Tell them one more thing, Mr. Routledge: What am I doing, if not going to ‘war’ for the independence of my own? Like Sam Houston and Stephen Austin, and those who left their blood in the Alamo. I am not fighting for what belongs to the Mexican people, now reduced to immigration drudgery. I speak for the Guyanese people, and what belongs to them. A fair deal, and not this accursed raw deal. A square deal and not this crime against the humanity of the Guyanese people.

Messrs. Ali and Jagdeo and Norton and Hughes are free to crawl on their bellies but spare me the indignity, the treachery, my brothers. This is an independence fight all over again, and that talk about first 100 days may never come. It will not. Not when there is this weaseling around and wigging about and wimping out. Gentlemen, stand up and be real men. Even if the orientation is not there, let the inclination be found. At least be real leaders of the illustrious ilk of Critchlow, Cheddi, and Forbes. Damn the oppressors. Denounce the dividers and destroyers of this patrimony for us, the Guyanese people. All four of them only count for pawns and collaborating cowards on the chessboards Woods and Mikells play with in Spring, Texas. Like Winston Churchill, they behold a milking cow (India), a jewel in the crown of Empire and Queen Victoria (Africa and India). He was an arch enslaver, and what do Irfaan Ali, Bharrat Jagdeo, Aubrey Norton, and now Nigel Hughes think that Woods and Routledge and Mikells (America’s Queen Victoria counting her Guyanese oil diamonds, rubies, and sapphires) are? How do they think that those American capitalist imperialists view them? As men? Don’t make me laugh. As warriors for their people? I want to puke. Woods and Routledge see them as blacker than me, and more contemptible than I can ever be. For today, Guyanese are sold into slavery by their own. And there is no worst calumny, treason, in Guyana’s reality.

I can imagine Jagan and Burnham before the British Colonial Office. Man, they had fire in them, despite their many follies and flaws. Supermen, they were and not the super failures that Guyanese have today. I think of Gandhi and Nehru arrayed for battle before their governors in Westminster, and there is awe and respect. The same holds well for Nkrumah and Nyerere, and that band of fighters for their people. In leaving, I have one message left for my four Guyanese brothers: my life is not my own. It is all I have to give. This message is more for Routledge to take to Texas. Let them know that there is one humble Guyanese man who is different. Buy all the others. Have them sell themselves and speak about the goodness of Exxon. There is this road of mine traveled, and I follow the directions of the God that guides me.