THE countdown to Christmas has started early this year and, as everyone knows, the shopping spree is underway. Downtown Georgetown, streets decorated with fairy lights are already congested, and there are traffic jams at major intersections.
This is Guyana at Christmas time. No one can take away the festive season from our kids and our elderly.

Not even the fabled, mean Mr. Grinch, described in a Christmas carol as “stink, stank, stunk”.
I re-looked at the headline news at this time last year, and noticed that our Mr. Grinch was hard at work then to spread “gloom and doom”. I again saw a similar story in yesterday’s Chronicle, captioned, “Harmon slams Jagdeo’s gloom and doom”.

TRIPLE WHAMMY
But this time around “Dr. Gloom” is facing a triple whammy that could spell his own political doom. Firstly, he failed to stop the Coalition’s $300-billion Budget, which was approved by the National Assembly on Friday last. I should imagine that the 54,000 senior citizens who have been voted over $13 billion in old age pensions are all laughing with disapproval at him.

Secondly, his bid to unseat the elected Prime Minister from the National Assembly in order to undermine the Coalition’s majority in the House was rejected by the Speaker. And, thirdly, his motion of no confidence in the government, which will be debated on December 21, will be defeated by an unshakeable, iron-clad, majority Coalition vote.

The triple-quasi-tragedy was conjured up as a bizarre, macabre, political tactic to undermine confidence in the APNU+AFC Coalition, which is now just past its third year as a government. The young coalition had to clean up the corrupt mess inherited from the one-party rule of the previous administration which had spent some four trillion dollars but left a bundle of bungled projects, still-born schemes, and incomplete works. The Coalition went to work, and Guyana is now seeing the edifice of new infrastructures all over Guyana.

GOOD GOVERNMENT
If nothing else, the Coalition has succeeded in these months to maintain standards of living by putting bread on the table of public servants and senior citizens, guarantee to our children quality education and free public health care to all citizens. It has worked to remove the constant, present danger to our national sovereignty, and succeeded in placing our territorial integrity, which was questioned by Venezuela, before a United Nations court. At a minimum, these essential ingredients on a score-sheet of achievements, testify to a good government at work for its citizens.

So, no gloom and doom shadow would envelope the Guyanese people as Christmas approaches. On Christmas-eve last year, I wrote in my column, “IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME!”, that Christmas is a state of mind. In this state, we wish for the ideals in life – love of humankind, peace and goodwill, and joy to the world.
For some of us, it is when we become children again. We re-live simple pleasures, remembering what has been, when we were swirling in the sweet smell and smiles of our caring parents, and bonding without inhibitions with our siblings.

As a village-boy, I enjoyed being in a bare-footed, rag-tag juvenile band. We used a discarded cooking pot as a drum, as we walked towards the big houses, singing carols on Christmas-eve at their doorsteps. We also wore cardboard masks and did an improvised jig as un-tutored masqueraders. Either of those would earn us a cupful of pennies, chunks of cakes, and enormous joy at Christmas time.

PAPER BULLETS
We didn’t know real toy guns then unless we went to the yards of a couple of rich folks in the nearby village. There, kids were dressed as cowboys. They wore gun-belts strapped to their waist and sported Zorro’s masks. They “fired” at each other, hiding behind trees and posts, with a staccato of paper bullets.

We also made noises of our own by placing chunks of carbons into an empty Ovaltine cup, with a single nail-hole at the bottom. We spat heavily into the cup, closed the lid and gave it a robust shake. With cup anchored firmly under the bare foot, a lighted match was put against the hole and, boom! – our improvised bombs would go off. Simultaneously and triumphantly, our unrestrained happiness would explode!

Yes, our Christmas time was flavoured with both black and white cakes, the key ingredients for which were bought from teacher Nathoo’s shop – mostly raisins, prunes and currants. Those would be delivered to the village baker who would mash the dough in an elongated, open wooden trough. The dough would be parcelled out and laid on silver trays, which were pushed deep into a huge, clay oven. We went home with the warm trays of cake on our head and in clothes saturated with the aromatic scent of essence and burnt sugar.

MAGICAL MOMENTS
Christmas then and now brings not only sweet nostalgia but magical moments in an unreal world of twinkling lights and bright hopes. It the hope that a toy is hidden away somewhere that would bring sparkling smiles on the faces of grateful children. For the elders, our soul is intoxicated with the joy of giving back to them the kindness and hospitality that we once enjoyed during our childhood.

The Guyanese character of charity and compassion underlines all of the other major festive seasons – Phagwah, Easter and Eid. In spite of the unrelenting drive by an opportunistic opposition to take the nation down to the wire, on the eve of Christmas, on a murky wave of divisive politics, the intrepid Guyanese spirit of embracing joy and hope would triumph.
Yesterday, Sita and I welcomed the first group of masqueraders at the official Residence of the Prime Minister. The troupe was trained and organized and danced their ritual in harmony with flutes and drums. And they gyrated best at the sight of notes, not coins! They too have a reason to celebrate and to spread the Christmas feeling.

EL DORADO
Next year, hopefully, Guyana will strike first oil. The Guyana El Dorado will be born. It will be Guyana’s blessings, not a curse. Guyana will need all hands – all clean hands – on board to ensure that real benefits flow to our people.

The discredited ousted post-Jagan, PPP regime has gambled with our past and has given our people little trust that they could ever take us into the future. Its recent failed attempts in Parliament to create a crisis was intended as a smokescreen to cover its obscene premature grab for power in order to get its sticky hands on the oil-laced Treasury.

The Guyanese people must not, and cannot, allow this to happen. Rally around your government! Defeat the mischievous motion! Then, let’s have a Merry Christmas!