What Mr. Routledge didn’t say, I say -Pt II

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

What Mr. Routledge didn’t say, I say -Pt II

OPINION BY: GHK LALL October 2026

Exxon’s Guyana Head, Mr. Alistair Routledge, created a firestorm in Guyana with an unyielding expression of his company’s position.  Though he said much, he was careful to steer clear of certain circumstances, disciplined to silence.  What Mr. Routledge didn’t say, I say.

Exxon is here to make a profit.  All else is charity.  A bat, a hat, a sponsorship, a relationship, those are all charity.  But with a difference.  Exxon takes Guyana’s oil money and doles out tiny dollops of charity to passive, pauperized Guyanese.  Profits and set asides for charity embody how free enterprise works.  Not Samuelson nor Stiglitz, but real life with real people.

Second, Mr. Routledge wasn’t crass; he didn’t state the obvious.  Exxon’s first duty is to its own constituency.  Investors, Managers.  Other workers.  All its stakeholders.  They vote for Exxon’s slate of directors, the team at senior levels.  They are owed.  Visions that reward.  Returns that are tangible, measurable.

Third, with those two in mind, all else are byproducts, secondary; some higher, some immaterial to Exxon’s plans for prospering to the max from Guyana’s wealth.  It is capitalism at its best (and its worst, from the victims’ standpoint).  This is what the Exxon Guyana hand was wise enough to skirt around, put as much distance as he could in his Guyana Proviso 2026.  Exxon is about Exxon.  Whatever is beyond that belongs elsewhere.

Fourth, a repetition now follows.  If Guyanese really want more from their patrimony, they will have to battle.  Not by going head-on in opposition to Exxon; that’s a losing effort.  There’s America, and its armada that can be summoned to set right a quarrelsome special relationship.  Guyana’s battling has to be more nuanced.  Though the PPP Govt seeks to deny this, it has to be a better guerilla fighter, more of a stealth operator.  There’s Guyana’s EPA.  Lots of visions and operations pass under that sensitive roof.  Sanctity of contract is still honored (it must be).  But Guyana must have its own timing.  How long it desires to receive its rightful share of profits.  How much it wishes to avoid a burdening cost bank.  A war could be fought on different front, using different tactics.  The PPP Govt has done so successfully with unions. 

The PPP Govt has won handy victories in elections, through fixing the territory to suit its interests, influencing outcomes.  Whither that identical PPP resourcefulness, PPP craftiness, PPP readiness to project the same with oil and the American leviathan, Exxon?

Fifth, Exxon has also been very skilled in piloting its own interests in other ways.  What is withheld.  Audits suspended between time and space.  Apologies to Alistair Routledge, but where Guyanese interests are being lynched.  What Mr. Routledge didn’t say was that Guyana’s leaders across the divide have to show some male testicles and some of that vital female endurance (think labor pains) to get Guyana to where it should be, and the Guyanese people to some different plain.  Preferably, a higher one.

Sixth, Mr. Routledge didn’t say it, but almost all Guyanese know it, the PPP as a party, and the other political parties exist with one vision prioritized: how to retain power or get into power.  He didn’t say that Exxon can and has tapped into and prospers from that ambition.  He didn’t have to say that Exxon can play them against each other, seek the one group that wouldn’t touch the company’s wealth gathering, and has succeeded handsomely in doing both.

Seventh, since Mr. Rouledge used the royal “we” in his Declaration of Georgetown, I use it, too.  We are here to make money.  Guyanese leaders, the Guyanese people, have their own duty.  To decide on Guyana’s destiny. 

When some grasp for power, some for money, others for liberty, there is how building this nation stands currently.  What Alistair Routledge was too polite to lay on the table (is to Exxon’s benefit), I did.  (Coming up: Firing the soul of the nation).

Routledge: regret to differ from Adams, Ram, others

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

Routledge: regret to differ from Adams, Ram, others

OPINION BY: GHK LALL October 2026

I regret differing from respected brothers, Dr. Vincent Adams and Chris Ram, two peerless Guyanese.  The source of the difference is Exxon Guyana President, Mr. Alistair Routledge’s statement that “it’s not our job to build the nation…they didn’t vote for us…we are not representatives of the people.”  Though I recoil from what Mr. Routledge said, he is right, except for one point, and on a limited basis only.  I dissect his statement, the main points of which are quoted in the preceding sentence.  

“It’s not our job to build the nation….”  The Exxon Country Head has been terribly wrong in many areas, many matters, many representations (billboards, reserves, revenue flows, and more).  He, however, is right that Guyanese should NOT look to Exxon to build Guyana.  Building Guyana is the job of the Guyana Government, Guyana’s political groupings, and the Guyanese people.  They must work at it with a passion, will it to rise from the derelict state (mentally, politically, governmentally) that it is today.  It is Pres Ali’s role to lead in building of Guyana, not Exxon’s board of directors, not Darren Woods, not Alistair Routledge. 

When the president puts aside divisive, destructive, politics, and engages political and civil society constituencies, then that’s from where the duty to build the nation starts and soars.  Hopefully succeeds.  At least, it increases the probability of progress.

When Pres Ali abandons his leadership role, lacks the courage to fight for what could build Guyana, through sheltering in a cracked glass house, that does not devolve to Exxon.  It shouldn’t, mustn’t.  Incidentally, Mr. Ali’s glass house has a name: sanctity of contract.  When he retreats there, doesn’t lift a finger to fight for developments that could build this nation, then why should Exxon? 

If Guyana refuses to fight for itself, why should others?  Who would do so for the abjectly fearful (doing nothing), the craftily resourceful (dodging leadership duty), and the smartly angling (retaining power)?

In lambasting Mr. Routledge, prominent Guyanese are giving their own pathetic leaders, their cowardly government, undeserved coverage.  One issue that I take with Mr. Routledge’s “build the nation” statement is his and Mr. Woods’ insistence that Exxon is a true, helpful, constructive partner, that the Guyanese people can hope to have, actually have.  If so, then helping to “build the nation” is part of a superbly profiting partner’s portfolio.  Can’t be as lopsided, as the record attests.  Nor as secretive.  Nor so destructive to the political and social fabric of this country.  A genuine partner will embrace that duty, as part of its enriched presence, for the wealth to be shared, a country to rise. 

Agreed that there’s no such animal as benevolent capitalism; and business is business, with no place for sentiment.  Hence, Exxon should sell itself as explorer and profit taker and not a partner

Not anything else.  It is my only qualification in agreeing with Mr. Routledge, speaking for Exxon’s High Command.  Recalling him would be reversing where Exxon’s Board and CEO stand.

“They didn’t vote for us.”  What is there to disagree about in that Routledge challenge?  Exxon’s board voted for a CEO, who then selected (voted) for Alistair Routledge as the best viceroy, the best warrior, for the company’s interests in Guyana.  Guyanese voted for Ali, Mohamed, Norton, Campbell and Walton-Desir.  They have to carry the burden of visions and actions on what is required to “build the nation”.  Then deliver on it.  It is improper, appalling, to delegate that to Exxon.  What are Guyanese: paralytics and misfits?  Not capable to tie their own shoe laces, unready to fold their hands into fists, and to stand for this nation?  It has been so, hasn’t it?

“We are not representatives of the people.”  I don’t usually agree with Mr. Routledge.  How can I disagree with him now?  Guyanese put Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, Norton, Campbell, Mohamed, Walton-Desir where they are to represent them, fight for them, even die for them.  They prefer to wound each other.  In some respects, Mr. Routledge just insulted them.  He savaged them.  I translate.  The people made them (YOU) their representatives.  Now get off derrieres and do all that can be done to build the nation.  Don’t look to Exxon. 

Guyanese have slackers for representatives where their patrimony is concerned.  Routledge is representing his constituencies well.  I wish I can say that about my Guyanese brothers and sisters sitting as the people’s representatives.

Finally, Alistair Rouledge could be, should have been, recalled for many other maneuvers.  Not on this statement, though.

MV Barima COI -expected operations, findings

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

 MV Barima COI -expected operations, findings

OPINION BY: GHK LALL October 2026

Pres Ali sez that Guyanese could expect a Commission of Inquiry into the MV Barima tragedy that is of the highest quality. The president has given the same assurance in other circumstances and what Guyanese were left to deal with was Excellency Ali type quality

Most Guyanese, including many from the PPP base, have a different definition, interpretation, and expectation of what real quality is, looks like, should be.  It’s painful, but the president’s history with quality leads me to low to no expectations re the MV Barima COI.  I present my expectations, which any quality COI should easily deliver awake or asleep. 

First Finding: a culture of political intrusion and direction contributed heavily to 100 lives lost.  Those in the political directorate who held up that and other boats, who overloaded it.  They indirectly (and directly) killed 100 struggling, lower-rung-of-the-ladder natives.  Names named.  All the way up.

Second Finding: a culture of executive and administrative acquiescence had a hand in sending that boat and those bodies in it to the bottom.  Cargo?  Who cares about any damn minister’s precious cargo now lost?  Highlight that, so that Guyana sees how governance functions, when the parades and speeches are done.  Bottom line conclusion: an overloaded boat had an overdue date with the seabed and fishes.

Third Finding: there’s a clear picture of ministerial and managerial actions that reek of material derelictions.  Responsible leadership.  Risk appetite.  Safety considerations.  This finding should go above two names or two government portfolios.  

Fourth Finding: ultimately, responsibility for the MV Barima tragedy rises above the names held out, goes beyond the clamor of vigilantes galloping forward and hunting for vengeance.  Vigilantes go well with vengeance.  But vigilantes-however well-intended, well-grounded, and well representative of the bottled rage of a people-are never about true justice.  It’s the justice of the emotionally crazed, the bloodthirsty.

Fifth Finding: indeed, ministerial heads have hands stained with blood.  But there are heads that are above their heads.  Ministers don’t operate in vacuums, or the isolation of remote islands.  Ministers accumulate reputations.  Depending on that record, honestly compiled, they remain in place, or are terminated.  When they are retained, despite chronic ills, then responsibility and accountability spiral higher.  Who kept them?  Who condoned their weaknesses?  Who covered up their gaps?  Who fostered a tragic culture (we are in charge and to hell with everybody else)?  We do as we please, don’t answer to anyone.  It was only a matter of time before a boat capsized, a road collapsed, a helicopter crashed, a children’s dorm burned.

Sixth Finding: 100 dead, Guyanese shattered, numbed, disillusioned.  This can’t be clean governance.  This has no ingredients that underpin trusted leadership at the highest level.  Any level.  Irresponsibility and treachery accelerated tragedy.

Seventh Finding: leadership platitudes added the profane to a painful set of circumstances.  Leadership must talk way less, speak to truth far more, and work constantly and sincerely at generating real trust.  Not racially motivated trust.  Not money trust (bartered for as part of an exchange).  Not propaganda energized trust.  But real trust from real people, who don’t owe anything to anyone, most of all political dominators and dominatrices.  This is right.  This is wrong.  This is who doesn’t belong.

In other countries, ministers were rolled out of offices, with their heads preceding.  In some instances, entire governments took the honest, decent step.  They departed.  National leaders have done so, on principle, or in response to the power of the people, and the pressures they brought to catastrophic issues. 

A point worthy of note is that those national leaders had no well-tended, well populated pastures to retreat to, settle down, and write their memoirs.  Or a textbook on cunning, but failed, leadership. 

A proper, honorable, self-respecting, MV Barima COI could, with one eye closed, one ear blocked, and one part of its mind otherwise occupied, arrive at the above findings inside a week.

King Charles— no apology, no hospitality

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA 

  King Charles— no apology, no hospitality

OPINION BY : GHK LALL October 2026

If no apology for serial crimes is so hard to make, then I can only imagine the resistance to calls for reparations.If there is nothing to apologize for, then what is there to make reparations about?

The issue is that ‘odious institution’ slavery.  Though centuries later, the stench grows stronger.  Of man’s inhumanity against man.  Specifically, the white man’s crimes against the Black man.  Those are not some slivers of an overwrought imagination.  Those crimes are real as in millions of dead, a continent hemorrhaged, and a people still trying to rise from the destruction done to it. 

If there is so much difficulty in extending a sincere apology for those monstrous crimes, then does any other apology for any depravity mean anything?

When Buckingham Palace can put on its best Oxbridge accents, and declare ‘no apology’ for slavery, then why is Guyana welcoming King Charles III?  If he can’t humble himself, then he should be quietly counseled to find hospitality somewhere else.

Whenever I think that the world has progressed, it hasn’t.  Whenever I harbor ideas that the essence of man has changed, there is fooling of myself.  Beside the warm embraces, the plummy smiles, lurk some old, venomous snakes.  It is known that blood attracts sharks. 

Oil attracts scoundrels at every level, from every walk, and all cardinal points. 

Frankly, some of the people who shake the hands of Pres Ali and Vice President Jagdeo would soon as spit on them.  Old prejudices die hard, if at all.  I try to drum these realities in their heads, only to come up short every time.  They believe they are beloved. 

It’s the black gold, my brothers, and the sooner that there is awareness of that magic, and the manipulators that come to Guyana’s doors, the better this country is for it.

I suppose that in the eyes of Buckingham Palace, an apology for slavery would be bad form set a ghastly precedent, and just not done.  Absolute rot!  In the mind of Buckingham Palace, a n—a is always a n—a and a c—e from the subcontinent is still a c—-e.  I have a challenge for white people and nonwhite folks.  What else can it be?  When a man can’t look another man in the eye and bring himself to utter a heartfelt apology, then somewhere in that formula is one who is not seen as a man, but as a lesser life form.  0ne unworthy of basic human dignity.  One underserving of a fundamental human consideration.  I am sorry.  On behalf of the British people, I extend a full and unqualified apology to the descendants of slaves treated so heinously by our forebears.

If that kind of respect does not exist, then that man or woman should not be in my house, in my space, in my land.

It goes without saying that calling upon Pres Ali and Vice President Jagdeo to stand tall for once, to stand straight, is asking too much.  I know a lost cause when I see one.  When Guyana was destitute and ragged, people walked over it.  Now that Guyana is rich and everyone wants to win its hand, to smell its perfume, to taste its riches, then those must count for something.  if the man enslaved cannot be given an apology, then what about the lesser crimes committed against the indentured of Guyana? 

Indeed, there are the impotent in Guyana who paste silly grins across their faces, when the kicks to the nuggets rain like before, only in a more velvety, silky manner nowadays.

Those who treat my brothers right, do justice by them, they are my brothers, too.  Those who hide behind clever words and postures, play their believed sophisticated games, they I keep far from, don’t want to be anywhere around me and my kind. 

To the British monarchy, this I deliver: no apology for slavery, then expect nothing resembling hospitality.  Guyana doesn’t need Buckingham Palace.  Buckingham Palace needs Guyana.  Slavery is still alive and well.  It’s not called that, just not recognized as being such.

 A nat’l govt, the national criminal enterprise

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 A nat’l govt, the national criminal enterprise

OPINION BY: GHK LALL October 2026

Want to see the PPP Govt’s true colors?  Expose it as the premier national criminal enterprise in Guyana and watch it go crazy.  Want to watch the national leadership degrade in the worst way?  Give it the public label of the region’s leading national criminal entrepreneurs, with only random exceptions.  I guarantee it.  The PPP Govt knows it.  Still, it works overtime to snuff out the few voices in pitiful, fearful, Guyana that lineup the government and identifies it.

Twenty indigenous children as good as murdered, while trapped in an interior dormitory that had maximum-security prison controls.  Then, another 100 Guyanese murdered as well in one mass killing that has shocked the nation and made the world blanch with disbelief.  A man behaves recklessly while around gasoline and matches, and it’s inevitable that a massacre follows, victims pileup.  Further, when six execution-style murders are put in a Ziploc bag and buried at the bottom of the PPP Govt freezer, then a national criminal enterprise prospers.

This is what the PPP Govt doesn’t want to hear spoken, or see written.  This is what drives ancient Burnham stooges mad, to find a spark, and add conscientious objectors to their victims.  It’s where the poisoned young, born that way, get worse along the way, and work tirelessly to blow away the disagreeable.  What else to expect from scurrilous, duplicitous henchmen?  Get him.  Thus, they operate from Offices of the Pres, the PM, the VP.  It must be a real desperado that the PPP has on its hands.  What’s revealing is that the more they try to vilify, the more that there’s false witnessing, the more they fail, shame themselves.  The credibility of the party and its actors (literally) develops bigger scars on their faces. 

 When declared a national criminal enterprise, the PPP gets resourceful.  It temporarily retired Live in Guyana, its guerilla fighting unit, and unveiled new faces.  New faces, old faces, it’s the same contaminated blood.  Dirty tricks (FB), Burnham venom (OP), PPP ooze (OPM), it is the same story: a national government proves itself, confesses its double life as the national criminal enterprise in Guyana.  There’re the billions squandered and stolen.  Those led to deaths by the score (Mahdia), then by a hundred (Barima).  Argue with that, my PPP brothers.  There’re the plasters, three to date, that peel off, because serial thieves know the game, play along.  One big man calling the PPP elite (ministers, public servants) and playacting with playful lashes.  Ayuh bettah deal straight, or else….  A bigger man, now weightless, held a siesta at the Arthur Chung Palace.  The same trick of a playful public beating down of those enriching themselves, while the Guyanese people get poorer, hungrier, sicker.  Sicker over the skullduggeries.  The first big man performed his masquerade a second time.  Regionals called, given a good spanking.  Part of the show. 

His reward was solemn faces externally, and smirks and yawns inside.  Meanwhile, Guyanese continue to cry for justice, for standards, for relief.

When these are held aloft in bright colors in Kiskadee Watch, Kaieteur News, Village Voice, Demerara Waves, and 592Guardian, the PPP mob takes over.  Men with PhDs, men with fake doctorates, men who were Burnham’s Molotov hurlers, all become agitated, and spring into action.  Who to send after this Dalit?  How to suppress this dissenter?  Make him look bad, to make the PPP look good?  Both are impossibilities.  The people see.  The people hear.  The people interpret, conclude.  The PPP Govt succeeded that brilliantly at being Guyana’s number one national criminal enterprise. 

FB efforts highlight the rot inside the party; make matters worse.  I feel for the party of Cheddi that has self-destructed, come to this low gutter

I grieve for the Ramotars and Rohees (still holding) amid the arrival of the new PPP creatures that crawled out of the sewer.  Cripes! OP and OPM and OVP must stink!  Behold! The PPP Govt: Guyana’s foremost national criminal enterprise.

Night tortures -uneasy the heads wearing crowns

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Night tortures -uneasy the heads wearing crowns

OPINION BY : GHK LALL October 2026

The spotlight is on KW’s October 1, 2026 editorial titled “Sleepless nights”.  What to make of this presidential confession?  Of his nocturnal torments, his dreamless nightmares.  The ghosts of 100 dead swirl around his head like a crown of nails.  Deserving, I think.  I shall try to be gentle, even though blood drips, oxygen stops.

Ten weeks after the MV Barima tragedy, the deceptions and deviations continue apace.  Three charged for murder.  The innocent paraded before the Stabroek Market, then made to march to the perp walk.  Such an injustice should strike the consciousness, reverse what valium tries to do.  Two months after the Commission of Inquiry has been sworn in, it is still trying to locate its compass and its propellor. Like the Mahdia Dorm Conflagration and its revealing COI, so the MV Barima aquatic suffocation and its COI that has sham marked on its face from the beginning. 

If there was any interest in honoring the dead, and justice for the impacted families, then several reflexive, irreversible, steps had to have occurred within a week of the tragedy.

An apology for the smirk and scorn of “noise.”  Those using that word should have resigned.  I differ with Kiskadee Watch about waiting for the evidence.  True men fall on their swords.  Damnit! There’s that Port Kaituma wharf and that new boat that was converted to a sport boat and love boat.  So, 100 were as good as doomed while the music played, the dancers gyrated.  Let’s there be no quibbling here.  Who honors their combat losses with the derisive contemptuousness of “noise?” 

The ministers should have resigned.  The Prime Minister should have gone voluntarily.  And the president in this instance has no claim on immunity.  If there is neither president nor prime minister, then there’s no cabinet.

Editors of the Kiskadee Watch: that’s taking responsibility (not slurs about “noise”).  Running oneself through is what eases the pangs of sleepless nights.  Too often the most pious and the most belatedly reflective are the most defective.  And self-destructive, too.  All these billions and all these crimes that have no owner.  Now, the conscience of the Guyanese people is savaged, the intelligence of Guyana’s indigenous belittled with “sleepless nights.”  Does anyone dance at a house of mourning amid the wrenching dirges of loss and pain?  Does anyone pretend at pain, when they were part of the plot that led to 100 dead, and a thousand beating their breasts, and a nation of a million asking: where is the responsibility?  Who will be man or woman enough to say, I am responsible?

Give seafarers a basket for a boat, and a toothpick and a feather for lifejackets to brave the ocean, and there is a recipe for tragedy.  In sleepless nights I hear an effort at sanctimoniousness that’s so risible, it incurs ridicule.  The parties have continued.  The charades live on.  Neither a protest nor a placard is needed when responsibility has to be taken, and there is always that ultimate owner.  The baton cannot be passed on, for there’s none other.  I think that the MV Barima catastrophe was both foreseeable and avoidable.  The condition and history of the boat.  How the same people now crying in the day and talking to some false god in the night misused those keeping that boat going. 

When they pulled rank and overloaded that boat.  When they added to its torturous and dangerous passages that took a few years too long before it collapsed under the weight of its own weakness and the might of the sea.

Last, I consider myself among the most sympathetic of individuals.  But when there’s a long, sordid, history of swearing to one thing (many things), then contradicting oneself, the best I can summon is distaste, but still a prayer.  Too many wrongs in this country can be rightly attached to government and leadership. 

From coverups of unsolved murders to character assassinations, from corruptions of words and budgets and oil money to the pathos of a gullible people.  If sleepless nights did happen, then their source, I think, could be much more than a boat with 100 poor dead people responsible. 

Morons have risen, madness sweeps all over

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOU NTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Morons have risen, madness sweeps all over

OPINION BY: GHK LALL –October 2026

An invitation is extended.  Look around.  Absorb the sweep of the present.  Allow that to take hold.  Turn it over in the mind.  Shiver first.  Then say what has to be said.  It is that worst of palpitating, sweating, paralyzing nightmares.  Invasion of the Morons.  To make matters cripplingly unbearable, there is that horror of horrors: the morons have taken over.  Many heads.  Vast spaces.  Platforms and narratives.  It’s a truly a dreadful time.  Pushing things still higher, it is beyond any hallucination, any old or new nightmare.  It’s the reality of morons at high trajectories.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a moron is a stupid or foolish person.  To which I add, a jackass that thinks its bray is a Mozart Symphony.  They come in different types and stripes.  When the madness takes over, they sport various costumes for color; and to match their masquerades that emphasize how unabashedly and exuberantly moronic they are.  Of all places, the United States has a moron at the senior table, one who drives priorities, their implementation.  

No one from any part of the world needs to take a refresher viewing of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to get a handle (and a chill) of how America has gone to the dogs.  Low ones.  A heavy dose of paranoia and malice provide the fuels.  What other outcome could there be when the way is cleared for a moron to rise and a Palace Guard of likeminded to be recruited, put in uniform, then let loose?  This isn’t no damn tea party.

This sort of development is normal in North Korea and Russia.  A tick could be marked in that box: expectation checked out, proven beyond doubt.  But the same in the good ole USA?  Nah!  No way, Jose.  Sorry xenophobia is an inseparable aspect of the moron’s apparel.  Loud talk.  Live presentations.  An endless stream of rich fodder for Saturday Night Live skits and Jimmy Kimmel spectaculars.  There is another moron caught in the updraft, this time in the always choppy, full-of-hostility Middle East.  It isn’t Teheran and some men whose heads are wrapped in towels.  Those didn’t prove too much of a defense when the bombs started following, and shrapnel flew.  It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who gave the world that gem of John Bull wisdom: revenge is a dish best served cold.  And from the sky.  Expand the mind.  Imagine the Middle East the home of morons with a special distinction.  Some went to America’s Harvard U.  Perhaps, that’s the source of the sickness, only nobody wants to say it.  I did.  Go ahead!  Plaster me with the label of anti this or anti someone else.  Like Donna Summer insisted, “I will survive.”

Moron invasion and ascendancy in America, Russia, Manchuria, and even in the Holy Land, the sacred hills of Judea and Samaria.  What Jesus refused to slither into armor and seize, is now done under the auspices of peacemaking.  See what I mean about a moronic mentality and with commercials selling its fitness for office!  But the invasion of morons doesn’t stop there.  There is India.  The world’s largest democracy is now the world’s largest madhouse.  Apologies to the Indian Ambassador.  Two hundred million citizens reduced to last caste status, if any.  Others to cockroaches.  From white supremacy to religious supremacy.  Just pointing to the facts, without an iota of malicious intent.  This is frightening.  Now, it gets downright alarming, nothing less than terrorizing.  I cast mine eyes in this direction.  After circumnavigating the globe, a shortcut really, I come homeward bound.

I wish that family could be spared.  But then, frank diagnosis would have to be sacrificed.  This region, this hemisphere, has its share of morons.  Two stand out.  One is from nearby.  Exclude Venezuela.  The other, well the other is unmentionable.  More than a moron.  Think of a creature that crawled from the sewer.  Scales galore.  Sores all over. 

A super moron giving off more than sound. There’s an overpowering stench that causes retching.  I look to the heights.  There’s apprehension: what’s next?

Grief comes too easily to some, opening for new rehearsals

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Grief comes too easily to some, opening for new rehearsals

OPINION BY : GHK LALL September 2026

Ever encounter a professional mourner?  Guyana has some highly-placed ones.  They don’t have to be paid to mourn (sometimes).  They will weep for free.  To get in the practice, to keep in championship form.  The MV Barima catastrophe is a monument to Guyanese grieving.  Expected from impacted families and communities.  Intolerable for those that have endured multiple casualties.  There’s a lifetime of trauma waiting.  I take for granted, because that’s the essence of families, neighborhoods.  Expected also is the cabal of professional mourners, those who claim being overloaded with grief. 

Stricken with pain that will not go away.  How they live night and day with the horror of the last moments, the torments, of those who left home, never to come back again.

When I hear these professional mourners in action, on public display, a bad state overtakes.  So disgusted that there’s need for a grief counsellor.  To lessen the stench and weight of these masqueraders.  Those who claim how troubled they are by grief.  Confederate General, Robert E. Lee, said it well: “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”  I borrow: it’s helpful that grief is such a grave development, lest we get too comfortable around it.  Hence, when I hear professional mourners attesting to how much they are impacted by the loss of life (under the contradiction of avoidable, unforgivable circumstances), disgust arrives first, with dismissal following soon afterwards.

For what is a professional mourner if not a cunning, duplicitous, user of the pain of others, the tears of the genuinely grief wracked, for his or her benefit from those conditions?  In other words, a callous pretender who is low enough to sink to the gutter to enrich self at the expense of those tearing their hair out of their heads, and beating their breasts.  When grief is real, when wrenching trauma is felt, then every effort is expended to offer relief to those who need it, those who could be comforted by an authentic gesture.  Developments that speak for themselves because they have that distinctive human quality about them.  Heartfelt sincerity.  Humility that doesn’t have to be faked.  The absence of these are the chief hallmarks of the professional mourner, no matter the color of the clothing he or she wears.  The genuine mourner is more than a comforter; he or she will go the extra mile, remove obstacles, so that suffering is cushioned, given merciful closure. 

A professional mourner erects hurdles, talks from both sides of the mouth, while still selling himself or herself as the proverbial friend who is of deeds.  What deeds, but ruses and ploys?

In thinking of the MV Barima family, those now riveted together eternally by avoidable tragedy, my first consideration would be, what can I do to ease the grief of this national family fused by circumstances?  A roadblock wouldn’t be ordered; nothing that dilutes their expectations.  A shell game wouldn’t be played; where syrupy promises are made, only for those to be laced with nails that rip at commonsense, then shred it.  When there is honest-to-god intent to get to the bottom (literally) of the MV Barima tragedy, then the farces that have been seen and felt have no place in the pursuit of the facts.  By sheer effort of will, and accompanying impeccable honesty, mountains that stand in the way are leveled.  They would never be built. 

When one is a professional mourner, a sham operator, a Job’s comforter, then the barriers that Guyanese have seen and run into, are already neatly laid out in place.

Last, when morality and honesty fled from Guyana, then old cons and new cons came into their own.  A prime exhibit of them is the professional mourner; that ubiquitous presence that flits from one tragedy to the next.  Their grief fills their sleeves.  Grief that weighs.  Getting from under it is the problem.

Slingah -what a singer, what a character!

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Slingah -what a singer, what a character!

OPINION BY : GHK LALL September 2026

Ninety-one and gone.  A rapturous inning, one worthy of Lords, and the Royal Albert Hall.  With the London Philharmonic accompanying.  The Mighty Sparrow lasted long, seemed to have been around forever.  What a singer and performer!  What a contributor to West Indian musical culture and life.  What a character!  Thought the best way to pay tribute to a regional immortal-indeed, a global one-is to reflect on some of his contributions, and how they came to mean so much to me and my generation, and others before and after.

My first encounter with the Mighty Sparrow was as a child, with “Maria.”  Three decades later, Whoah-wah-whoah-ohhh Maria, and those soaring and cascading reeds can still cause a tingle, the pores to grow.  Then came that classic “Dan is the man in the van.”  The King of Calypso (and Emperor of Many Musical Genres) went to town on English nursery rhymes, through parody, kaiso poetry, and sheer musical wizardry.  Some extracts may explain my excitement.  Twirly and twisty were two screws.  They are in the Government in Guyana, and not in minor roles.  Plus, who mek a cow jump over the moon.  Due to being ahead of his time, and a politically correct practitioner (sez who?), Sparrow was kind enough to leave out the farm in Guyana from which that super cow came.  Must be one of those moons that dogs howl at, and which set lunatics to roam free at all levels in a scared country.  When a lullaby was needed, a little romantic mood and interlude, there was that timeless evergreen “Only a fool (breaks his own heart), ”  Jeez when the Sparrow met the Dragon the sparks didn’t just fly, they crooned, and made many swoon.

Alongside those hits were Drunk and Disorderly which captures the local rum culture, and the need for insultation of the music rooms of bars.  Financing to be provided by a loan from the Guyana Development Bank.  This man thought of everything.  Question for Guyanese: was the Mighty Sparrow more of a superb calypsonian, or was he a slick politician in disguise?  What about Melda: oh you making wedding plan carrying me name to obeah man….”  Maybe that’s why Guyanese politicians were turning up so often in so many churches and other religious houses around the middle of last year.  They weren’t taking any chances, covering all the bases.  From consulting about election prospects with obeah men in secret to pretending at worshipping God in his Holy Temple.  Gosh!  I am ordering a copy of Slinger Franciso’s birth certificate.  I think that he was more of a Guyanese than a Grenadian.  Something got mixed up somewhere.  It is uncanny for one man-and a singer at that-to come so close to Guyanese political and cultural reality so frequently.

He was a man for all musical seasons.  A romantic in on era (Maria, Mr. Walker, and Only a Fool) and raunchy in the next: Benwood Dick, Congo Man, Village Ram, and Witch Doctor (I understand they have started giving out free PhDs for that practice).  Over the decades, the Mighty Sparrow has enthralled endless numbers, excited from aspiring singers to novice composers to anyone who ever felt daring enough to dabble in Karaoke and dancing.  He was up there and out there in a space by himself.  Miles apart from the competition.  Now after 91 years on the rich green soil of this region, he has gone on an unending singing tour. To that part of heaven specially reserved for men and women who sang their hearts out, and gave of their all to make life a little easier, a tad better, for their fellow journeyers in this earthly pale.  In this vale of tears, the Mighty Sparrow did make Guyanese and others in these parts forget their tears and be of good cheer.  If only for a moment, it was enough to last a lifetime. 

Thanks for the good times, Slinger Franciso.  Sing one for me up there, Sparrow.  I may throw one down the hatch in honor of a magician in action, a majestic passing.  Yeah, it’s true: Sparrow dead.

Prem Narine: murders covered up -Sgt Bascom exonerated (Pt III)

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592 GUARDIAN♦ACCOUNTABILITY♦INTEGRITY IN JOURNALISM♦GUYANA

Prem Narine: murders covered up -Sgt Bascom exonerated (Pt III)

OPINION BY: GHK LALL September 2026

Was former Guyana Police Force Sergeant Dion Bascom, a victim of government foul play?  Was he made into the sacrificial lamb so that another could be protected, saved?  So that seniors in the Police could carry on with their side businesses?  So that the PPP Govt could maintain its lucrative criminal relationships?  I don’t know.  Nor do I claim to know.  But this is what I know, as sifted from the facts that recently made their way into public space.

Fact One: there were six execution-style murders.  Fact Two: one party has been fingered as the perp alleged in all six of those capital felonies.  Fact Three: the discloser of those facts is, ironically, high up in the Guyana Police Major Crimes Dept.  Fact Four: Sgt Bascom had alleged coverup in murder, which may or may not include the six execution-style murders.  Those mentioned by one who I have no choice but to identify as an approved Guyana Police and PPP Govt whistleblower.  Fact Five: Sgt Bascom had feared for his life, as he stated.  Fact Six: Sgt Bascom has claimed he was being setup, part of a frameup and coverup, by the Guyana Police.

Considering the jolting revelations about six execution-style murders from one of the Guyana Police Dept’s Finest, Snr Supt, Prem Narine, I submit that former Sgt Dion Bascom now stands exonerated.  This man is owed an apology from the Police Top Cop, and the top-ranking leaders in the PPP Govt.  The first apologies should come from the Police Commissioner and the Hon Minister of Home Affairs, though new to the job.  In mentioning the Minister of Home Affairs, I look deeper, and go further.

Whoever was the minister(s) holding that sensitive portfolio during that execution-style murder season, it is pushing reason to the brink to think that he would not have known.  Nor would not have had an interest in bodies falling, and murder numbers rising.  Suspended for the moment is the traditional political management of the Guyana Police by different governments in different years, without a single year excluded.  As a matter of sheer routine, administrative curiosity, management updates, and the minister’s own regard for the murder record on his watch, I tender that he had to have some knowledge.  It would be a gross evasion of duty, if the Top Cop didn’t so engage and inform the honorable minister.  In identical fashion, it would rise to the level of gross negligence if that now armed Minister of Home Affairs kept what he knew to himself, and decided (on his own) that that’s neither the PPP Cabinet’s, or the PPP Govt leadership’s, business.

It’s time for Fact Seven in this conversation.  The remarkable fact that the sole suspect, with evidence to match (the super said so, not I) was almost like an unappointed PPP Prime Minister, had to drive the then Minister of Home Affairs to share around that hottest of scorching potatoes.  Perhaps, a better reference is an unpinned grenade. 

No one man-not even a powerful minister, no matter how much of a demolisher or inheritor of the role he may have been-wants to be remembered as the sole owner of that situation.

Having said all of that, it shocks that there were no capital charges.  Yeah, money talks, bull walks.  Friendship counts, the law is counted out.  Are Guyana’s top lawmen listening, feeling the heat generated by this sordid situation?  Is the president, whoever that was at the time, and those since?  Six families were mocked with the unclosed loss of loved ones via violent crimes.  The Guyana family was scorned though murder evidence managed away from it.  Sgt Dion Bascom was putout and put away with extra energy and ferocious determination.  All the while, six execution-style murders stayed unsolved because the PPP Govt had an asset to protect, a dog in its crime detection dog-and-pony show.

I recommend a medal and proper reward for Sgt Bascom.  Cybercrime charges were blown up to blow him away.  He dodged a bullet.  Snr Supt Prem Narine should get a special medal.  The Order of Silence.