Someone must be watching over me

Dear Editor,

Somebody up there is watching over me. I have always lived with that belief, even when going astray. As I observe the slowly emerging carnage from Elections 2020, there is even more conviction in the graces of divine providence.

Early last week, I shared a few words of scripture with the assembly present, and the tech-enabled one at large. The first text was something about discarding the old, embracing the new, which I applied racially, politically, and socially. In this society, the old has been perpetually about dividing, disrespecting, and discarding, while the new should be about reaching for reconciling towards rehabilitating. As a people, as a nation. Words concerning the ‘racial’ and ‘political’ were never used; they didn’t have to be. It was sufficient to state that we are hurting and hating all the more for both. I heard that the cyber response was hospitable. Surprising, but welcomed.

Editor, I am where I belong, where I can try to make a difference, to introduce the troubling, to massage the disturbing, to probe for any opening. I am at home close to the core that is more of me. Not as a preacher, but as messenger and helper. And of this more must be done. This is shared because of something that happened last year, and which instructs as to the choices made, the roads traveled and not traveled. The story goes like this.

In May 2019, through a media intermediary, I was invited for a chat with a total stranger. The crux of the 45-minute discussion was I was being invited and urged to be the leader of a new political party to contest the elections of 2020. Unhesitatingly, my response was thanks, but regrets. Now here I am and there I was, a re-migrant, who stood by the deathbed of a loved one in New York and asked: please guide me to give back whatever I can to country and church. I have done both, and still do with the former, but on a vastly diminished scale, which is the way it should be.

This is placed before the public because of what occurred during the elections’ hysterias and agitations, and now as the political chess pieces are being aligned and realigned, via political dispensations and considerations. Almost without exception, the newcomers and operators in the new parties (conceived as opposition) are part and parcel of the present victory parade. They are well placed, too, for future feastings. In their selfish calculations and overweening ambitions, they have achieved personal political nirvana, an opulent one. They are now well-positioned on the inside track for sampling the plums that dangle (and were dangled) during the 5-month elections circus.

The newcomers rightly scorned the PPP and the PNC before, but now jump feet first in the bed of the PPP, which is crowded with them. I think of this Guyanese evil empire and I first shudder, then I breathe smoothly. I shudder because that bed could have included me, save that I have never been a seller. When in May 2019, that stranger offered the leadership of the new party envisioned, I mentioned that I must honor the public role held, and that there would be conflict. As I ponder where I could have been today, had I agreed, I am grateful for the guidance that comes. What is more important, is how I would have been in my own eyes.

My roots are not of politics, where neither honor nor decency reside. Nor has it ever been about what is in it for me, as is so obvious today in the decisions and actions of others, those newcomers, mostly young, mainly hustlers, now exposed. As I look at the new faces now taken care of, through easy absorption into the state’s apparatus, and effectively nullified, peace comes. For that could have included me, and contrary to all that I stand for, if I were weak and venal. Like I said, somebody up there is watching over me. The others, who made such a preening stir, have to live with themselves. I am at home with a little media, some street outreach, and a lot of the spiritual. It is just as well. This I give readily to my fellow Guyanese.

Yours truly,

GHK Lall