THEY proliferate in the social landscape; the opportunists who submerge their realities under many guises.

They pander to the egos of newly-emerging powerbrokers, who largely ignore the real face of protagonists, newly become friends and supporters, which are indelibly painted on the landscape of this nation’s history, and abandon their defence mechanisms as they fall victims – willingly, to the inventive ploys structured to win undeserved trust, because the real motivation behind this newly-configured, ostensible friendship has the imprimatur of the Bank of Guyana and the map of Guyana.
And they are succeeding – immeasurably, riding the crests within every sector because they know the right words, and even though those words camouflage their real sentiments and intents, honourable people who have proactive, nation-building agendas do not look beyond the surface to find the caricature lying beneath.
However, switching identity to access, even to forge opportunities, is a natural human trait. In Guyanese parlance it is called “drinking soup.”
These two-legged chameleons are the parasites to be found within every society, but they are extremely hard to detect because they burrow themselves into easy income access frameworks, and then entrench their presence like so many larvae that give birth to flesh-eating maggots, which translate into resource-consuming parasites that rob any nation, especially developing nations such as ours, of much-needed resources that could benefit the infrastructures of social development in a more meaningful way.
A deeper and wider scrutiny by national stakeholders would reveal the true visage of these charlatans and set the stage for the ultimate cleansing of the Augean stables this has become, where pretence has superimposed itself over actuality to an extent where it has assumed a visage of sincerity.
Actually, equating these pretenders with the chameleon is insulting the poor creature, as it only changes colours to protect itself from predators, whereby the sycophants are the real predators colouring the socio-political landscape with the dark hues symbolic of the evil and the opportunistic denizens inhabiting the belly of the underworld of societies.
Do you know where to find them? Just look right next to you; and under every rock.