H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – The old Bharrat Jagdeo is back

Jun 08, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – The old Bharrat Jagdeo is back, and he is now bigger and ‘badder’ than when he was Guyana’s President.  He has now taken off the gloves, and shed the new skin that he had put on because it fitted so abrasively.  It is back to the old ways: abusive and aggressive, hostile and hard headed. I regret saying this, but it is clear that Vice President Jagdeo has a great distaste for civility, probity, and sincerity.  This may not have mattered in the wild days of the past, but now that there is oil, and there are all these eyes focused intently on Guyana, and every development here, there is the urgent need for Guyana Vice President, a former head of state, and now Oil President to get a better grip on himself.  I give him a helpful hand, and though he is sure to brush it aside angrily and impatiently, I must persist to save him from himself.

GHK Lall

The PNC might be his enemy, but I am not. Certainly not of my brother Bharrat Jagdeo, or the PPP.  Despite he and his people wishing, working, coercing many to kowtow to their self-dealing narratives and postures, they must learn that there are some who remain unmoved by overtures, assaults, and other outrages.  All Guyanese are asking for are straight answers, and there are more and more in Guyana, who see through Dr. Jagdeo.  His herky-jerky pronouncements in public are unpersuasive; in fact, they are perverse because the sully the expectations of citizens, while degrading the commonsense of the ordinary, educated, and experienced in the population.

Guyanese are not that stupid brother Bharrat that they fail to see through the schemes crafted, the poisons that they hold for them.  Guyanese are nowadays even more sensitive than brother Bharrat because they discern how truth gets under his skin and unravels him, how his nerves are rubbed raw, leading him to resort to his old culture of hysteria and insecurity.  All this becomes obvious when brother Bharrat lashes out at Guyanese he finds objectionable, when he condemns and contemptuously discards those who have only one plea, one demand that I present in different ways, so that there is the fullest understanding of what would be of supreme benefit to all Guyanese.  Truths, not deceits. Facts, not fakeries. Accuracy, not make believe. Transparency, not secrecy.

Where is the error, sin, seditions in those brother Bharrat?  What is so leprous in the few who put those on the table for fellow citizens to dissect and decide for themselves?  How can such ever amount to what is leprous, when the issues are about who is a fraud and falsifier, who is a concealer and a creator of oil and other fables, in that they struggle with straightness, with openness?  It would be infinitely more advantageous to brother Bharrat if he could only humble himself to recognize and accept some Guyanese are giving him the tools, ammunition, and backing to faceoff before Exxon, and fight for all citizens.

I want Bharrat Jagdeo to get any credit, any encomia, that is due.  When he succeeds, Guyanese are victorious, get a taste of what oil means.  So, I illuminate the errors and weaknesses of his ways, without one personal ingredient infused into the offerings that I lay before his eyes.  He can rail and rant, and that is his prerogative, even though it makes him into a much lesser man and leader than he is, that he could be, and must be.  On that, I am immovable.  My role-indeed my duty as a citizen-is to shed light, and to do so with the grooming and raising that have been my own privileges.

Brother Bharrat must remember Saddam, and how he was used and then vanquished.  He must recall Muammar and how he did not fear, even if his life itself was the price.  Brother Bharrat must look across the border, and heed how leadership extravagance, and disparity in the distribution of patrimony, has transformed the once richest country in the hemisphere, Venezuela, into a desolation of desolations.  I go to the pain of repeating that old maxim of history: the foreigners for whom he fights so ferociously (even cursing and kicking his own) have no permanent friends.  They have only permanent visions of what is to the permanent benefit of their people, their own coffers, and their own prosperity.

I ask-I go so far as to beseech-my brother Bharrat to look at himself in the mirror.  He is not even a shadow anymore; such is his shrinkage.  I recommend that he listens to himself, and he is sure to come to the same conclusion of hundreds of thousands of Guyanese.  The man, this Guyanese leader, is splitting hairs, is selling snowflakes, and is running away and separating himself from the mandate and expectations of the people who put he and his group where they are. I implore brother Bharrat to listen and adjust accordingly.  He will be a better man for it.  One other parting thing: as I embrace him as my brother, I remember Cain.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

• Bharrat Jagdeo, civility, Guyana, President, Vice President