Today is Easter Monday, the day after Easter Sunday traditionally regarded by Western Christians as the day Jesus Christ rose and ascended into Heaven after being crucified on the cross by the Romans. For Eastern Christianity, it will be commemorated next Sunday. Because of Guyana’s history of colonisation by Europeans, who had been Christianised in the first millennia, Christianity became the State religion of Guyana. It was introduced to the Indigenous peoples, as well as the freed slaves and later the Chinese and Indian indentured servants. The Portuguese were already Christianised.
Easter is consequently a festival familiar to all Guyanese, if not in its religious aspects, certainly in the secular customs that became associated with it through the ages. Amongst these was kite flying, which is a particularly Guyanese innovation, that brought out families into the open spaces with their picnic baskets and kites of all shapes and sizes. It was always an exhilarating experience, especially to the young and the young at heart, to get that kite soaring into the skies. In a sense, it symbolised the yearning of the spirit of Guyanese, out of slavery and indentureship, to break free from the shackles of their still quotidian struggles.
This year, however, most of us will not even be able to experience that symbolism because of the COVID-19 pandemic that has forced us into isolation and lockdown, just as the PNC-led Government is attempting to break the Guyanese spirit as they had done between 1968 and 1992. During those years, when fellow West Indians would boast about the challenges of living with disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes, Guyanese would quietly one-up them by noting they had to deal with Burnham and the PNC. This time, however, when the entire world has been hit by COVID-19, we have the double tragedy of confronting another PNC grab for power.
What has been especially ironic this Easter in this iteration of the PNC-as-tragedy for Guyana, has been their insistence that their leader David Granger is a “Christian” man. In fact, this claim formed the centrepiece of the image he projected to the nation to convince Guyanese that he was an “honest and decent man with integrity”. But that was all it was: a projection, like the shadows in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. But sadly, like the prisoners chained to the walls of the cave who insisted the shadows were reality, so it is that so many supporters of the PNC have been chained by the fears the latter have invoked and refuse to accept that those fears have no basis in reality.
The PNC and its putative Christian, “honest and decent leader with integrity” have tried to rationalise their clumsy and heavy-handed attempt at rigging the elections to their supporters by swearing that if the PPP were to get back into office, they could never be ousted and this would be a threat to the very survival of those supporters. But if the PPP’s record were such as to support that narrative, the PNC should have no reason to rig, since a significant percentage of the latter’s “constituency” would not have had any reason to switch their votes. As they have evidently done. That significant section has become wise to the nature of the shadows that have been projected to keep them in thrall.
The diplomatic community and the international observers have not been chained to any wall and have uniformly condemned the PNC’s antics in counting and frivolous recourse to the courts. While the US Ambassador declared that her country is simply interested in democratic governance in Guyana, which coincides with their interest, on Easter Sunday, Executive member of the PNC, Aubrey Norton crassly attributed their condemnation of the rigging as a result of them being bribed. He wrote in the State newspaper: “All and sundry are aware that the PPP had, and continues to have, a deliberate policy of using their ill-gotten gains to fete, entertain and influence some diplomats in Guyana.”
We hope today, Easter Monday, the PNC would repent and let Guyana be free.
