Editorials have been slammed. Letter writers and columnists lambasted, often slandered. Now, it is the turn of a song. Singing a simple song of sixpence is now found to be offensive by the PPP Government. To be accurate, it is 6.5%, but worth all of sixpence, for its lasting effects. If a mighty national government could be so insecure as to aim at a child’s song, then there is no limit to who and what may cause even more disturbances. When truth (6.5%) is a development to be blotted out, a child (all of 6 years old) is consigned to the periphery, then what Guyanese have is not a democracy, but a crass dictatorship.
I ponder what the PPP Government, and its erstwhile leaders, would have done if there was a Mighty Chalkdust in Guyana’s roiling social and political environment. Ban him, possibly. Or a Bob Marley (“I shot the sheriff” and “Redemption Song”). Brutalize him, probably. Yes, they are killing our prophets, and it has been a long time now. If the president and vice-president and minister (and their people) are so sensitive as to take the battle to kids over a song that speaks to their own self-praised handiwork, then conscientious adults had better watch out. Danger lurks in every corner, be it Robb Street or Vlissengen Road. Like Macbeth, the PPP Government’s brain trust contemplates the next moves to be meted out against perceived enemies. Macbeth got rid of Banquo first, then he made his play on the sons. Except the man was deadly serious. It was not child’s play. Just the other day, there was talk about considering the children. I think that in the book of some, this 6.5% affair qualifies as thinking of, and caring for, the children. We have gone a long way, and sunk to a low depth, when a child is targeted and dealt with in a manner reminiscent of some of the most depraved tyrants of old. If memory serves well, the courtiers of humor and serenades were a specially protected class. What is a song, if not to make citizens think? What was the Mighty Chalkdust doing with “Afraid Carl?”
Who should Guyanese be afraid of in this tortured democracy? The almighty Ali? The sorry Barry? The ungainly Aubrey? I remind all Guyanese, pro this and pro that: when the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. Good lawd! tyranny over a simple song singing to the glories of 6.5%? When a song and its singer is sidelined and suppressed, then it is only a matter of time for a letter writer, a public contributor, a speaker, a rhetorician, a logician, or an academician to be attacked and assassinated. Character first. Probably, another kind later if there is the madness to continue with unruffled persistence. In my way of thinking, a democracy is made healthier, leaders pushed to a saner and wiser level, when there are contrarians. Not for the sake of being an objector for its own limited sake. But a contrarian speaking to that mysterious compulsion called conscience. It is now beyond a tendril of doubt that the men and women in the PPP Government, almost every one of them (there! I made it near absolute), have lost touch with the balancing, refining, instincts of conscience. Callousness has taken over their consciousness, their comportment and, I would dare to believe, the roach motel that is their character.
I hear that plaintive cry that has lost its croon, but which is still so powerfully compelling: ‘look what they’ve done to my song ma.’ Is this what the PPP of Dr. Cheddi Jagan has come to, and for a small song that has one offending one-word stanza: 6.5%? Is this the repugnance of a PPP Government that my fellow Americans have foisted on my fellow Guyanese, and all in the name of energy security and Yankee corporate profitability? The president is on record as lecturing diaspora Guyanese to come and be part of the solution, and not part of the local crowd of complainers. God help this president, for the more he opens his mouth, the more the world realizes how much help this national leader needs. His people are muzzling a child over a song in the local arena. The president goes into a foreign environment, and takes a peremptory tone, strikes a preemptive note, to warn closet complainers. Somebody should have held aloft that child’s photograph and her 6.5% calypso story. To alert friend and foe of the kind of Guyana that they are going to, and what could be in store for them, should they have the temerity to speak the truth.
A song that should be allowed to soar has caused so much searing of the spirit, cauterizing of the flesh, in the dark dens of this PPP Government that has lost all claim to being about the civilized, to represent what is wise. Today it is a song that is speared, tomorrow it could be the sword unleashed to take out some other Guyanese offender.
