An appeal to leaders, particularly the president

Dear Editor,

My heart is heavy, and it takes a lot to do that, given where I have been. My mind, too, is blurred, and that rarely happens, even when I go off on the deep end. And the deep end is where we are as a people, a country, and place with still resident hopes of some semblance of a viable future. I do not like where we are at all, where matters seem poised to go. My first stop is before the president. It is my only one.

From my humble place at the bottom of the barrel of this society, I call upon my president, our president, President David Granger to listen for a moment, to give me a hearing through all the other sounds and messages and development with which he has to deal and from which he must emerge with a vision as to where this country, this beloved Guyana of ours, needs to go.

I came back here because I thought and felt that it was going some place that I could go with Guyana from the distant back of the line. At present, it is not going anywhere. But the downward. Towards the dark. Definitely to the dangerous. I do not mention anything about petitions and possible annulments, or constitutional crisis and social suffering. But I do sense keenly the eerie, the perilously ominous, the ruinously upheaving. I say most respectfully to Mr. Granger, as a son of this soil (me, he, and all the others), as a returnee, as a servant, as a hurting citizen: Let us not go the route contemplated. Please. Let us refrain from venturing into the unhelpful, the social defeating, and the nationally uncharted.

I say this, because as I read pronouncements from His Excellency, and as I interpret them with the scant wisdom that is my limited gift, I think of where we have come from since March 3 and where we are today, Sunday, June 7. First, it was – victory was assured, so be calm and patient. Then, it was – we have been subject to massive fraud, but we have won, and now be calmer and more patient. And just last week, I do recall hearing the first interests and inclinations, the first readiness and the first push towards a governance arrangement that is on a national scale and dual (maybe more) construction.

Not coincidentally, and never untimely, another honourable man of this land, one Mr. Samuel A. A. Hinds, a former president and prime minister no less, spoke earnestly of the need for a start to be made with Truth and Reconciliation. What could be more profound? More practical? More powering towards our infinite possibilities?

I don’t know, but I do know this: whatever is involved in such Truth and Reconciliation, I am for it, of it, and with it through and through. For from that could come the first stirrings of healing that this society so direly needs, and like never before. Elections 2020 has mangled us, left us distraught. Many once overseas-based Guyanese who came here with the highest hopes have taken to the air in yet another exodus from this stricken land, and stricken it is. That they do so amidst a global pandemic is all the more telling. The opportunity for me to go also has been present from the start.

But I go nowhere. For here I stay. I am too old to run. I am too settled to stir. Perhaps, I am too stupid to know better. Now I give a little bit of myself today. I pray that it will be well received, despite its graceless language. I call quietly but insistently upon President Granger to do the right thing. He understands where we are, to which I add this: we are hurting, and we are disturbed. I am. We are worried as to the newest direction, the wrong road that may be travelled with the not irrelevant nor immaterial objections and resistances harboured, given all the writings on his side of the wall.

I am worried that misjudgment and misdirection is too close to the heart to be denied, to be waved aside, to be ignored and not acted upon in what is genuinely believed truly serves interests of party and constituency.

To the president, I humbly and respectfully appeal, I exhort: let us for once in this blessed (and cursed) place, put the nation first, all of it, in its every corner and cranny, in all of its beauteous diversity. Mr. President, I come today, like never before as a brother, as a follower, as one who is still a believer. I believe in the promise of this country. I believe that the power in which I believe in more than anyone and anything else will guide to get to the right state of mind and to the right decision that has to be made. Let it be made with the democratic taking precedence. I still believe and I must trust. For if I don’t have that, then what else do I have? I believe and that is why I stay, why I plead, why I continue to trust. I keep doing these things, even sometimes I don’t know why. I just do. Mr. President, please do, too. May God bless the president, Guyana, and all Guyanese.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall