New Values, Moral Dilemmas

Hello there my new TRAKKER readers.  I’m Allan Fenty, former school-teacher and story-teller; amateur folklorist, public relations adviser and columnist still living, loving and suffering in Georgetown – the one original place of my birth in the Greenland of Guyana.

A graduate of the University of Life, Faculty of the Street, I feel strongly and with some evidence that I have enough experience to share some views on life and on issues of national and international significance with you.  The choice is yours, for I’ll never want to intrude.

I have been writing on the captioned issue over the past decade.  Here is my moralistic drift:  Drug-trafficking and its consequences have become all-pervasive in Guyana.  Even without convictions in court, evidence abounds which indicates that the protagonists and proceeds of the cocaine industry virtually control many aspects of economic and social life in good old Guyana.

So that in sport, religion – yes, some religious WORSHIP-the entertainment and cultural circuit, in commerce, of course, the hidden hand of cocaine or laundered funding lurks. To be frank,  I share the view that the insidious illicit narcotics trade does finance a significant portion of Guyana’s social-economic life and activities.

But, to me, the new POST-SEVENTIES MORALITY, the now blurred line between right and wrong, actually accommodates the reality of cocaine amongst us.  People –upright, law abiding, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, – turn blind eyes to establishments and business dealings operated by Drug Barons – or their fronts.  Innocent Guyanese support Night Clubs, Restaurants, Supermarkets, Pop Concerts, Cultural Events sponsored, promoted or secretly funded by the Executives of the Narcotics Industry.

The dilemma I point out to certain friends and parents is this: if you knowingly, willingly support an enterprise run by a Drug Lord, WHAT could you really tell your errant child who smokes a spliff, mixes with the Baron’s children or friends, or is caught doing something illegal and related to that trade?  You go to church but support the efforts of those whose businesses is founded on, or subsidized by cocaine – which is sold and used to wreck lives?  Or even end them? Could not your child point out that you – if even in an indirect manner – are lending support to evil?

In truth, good old time values and virtues have shifted drastically from those which were taught us by our grand-parents in good old B.G. (When Guyana was British).  Drawing from a wicked evolving, revolving world, the new value-systems and mores even seek to justify the role of dirty money in our society. (What would become of our fragile economy, they ask, if some Big Businesses are closed down?

The new morality teaches that “two wrongs might just make a right”.  The old and new laws notwithstanding, what does your grandmother, your home circle or your place of worship tell you?

Actually, what is your own position——morally?

ALLAN